Unity
by DiscoTeriyaki
Summary: Sequel to Leaving Home. (Formerly titled "Self-Discovery")
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

It was a clear, chilly night in the Iowa plains, perfect for viewing the meteor shower that would hopefully be at its zenith overhead. Aside from the fire they'd built, there was no other light to obstruct their view—they were quite a ways out from the university and its neighboring town. All they had to do was roast marshmallows, knock back a few shots for a different kind of heat, and wait.

Dib had to admit, he was nervous. Being such a cold night, the other friends he and Liz had invited from the ghost hunting club to watch the shower had either called off or flaked. It was just the two of them, sharing a bottle of Kahlua beneath the stars.

"I feel like such an enabler," Liz said. "I always hated in high school when my friends' older siblings would buy them alcohol for parties, but now here I am being _that_ person."

"Well, it's not like you bought it for me specifically. And I'm not planning on becoming an alcoholic because you're sharing this with me," Dib said, driving the bottle into the snow between the lawn chairs they'd borrowed from the school for their "club event."

She laughed. "Oh good! That makes me feel better."

He laughed too, the flush in his cheeks hidden by the orange flicker of the fire. He leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the glitter of the cosmos. Where was Zim in that big mess of stars?

He shouldn't have thought about it, because thinking about it was the emotional equivalent of throwing a wet blanket over a fire. Ever since the alien left a little over a year ago, Dib had been going through a strange half-grieving process. He figured Zim was alright (or at least hoped very hard that he was), but his departure literally marked the end of an era in Dib's life. It had forced him to finally step back and question what kind of person he wanted to be, what direction he wanted his life to go. For now, he had settled on the college in Iowa and a major in journalism.

"You good?" Liz asked. "Maybe you oughta slow down on the Kahlua."

"No, it's not that," Dib said. "It's just…it's hard to explain."

"Homesick? That happens sometimes when freshmen come back from holiday break," she said, ever full of comforting tour guide knowledge.

"Trust me, I got plenty of my dad and sister to last me till summer," Dib said.

"Something else then? You can talk to me about it, you know. Unless you're not comfortable," she said. Dib thought she sounded a bit sad in the last sentence. He sighed as he debated internally, the years of ridicule sitting on his shoulders like a bird of prey ready to peck his eyes out. But Liz was so kind, and so open-minded about the paranormal. Maybe, just maybe…

Instead of looking at her, he spoke to the stars. "Do you believe in aliens?"

She hummed in thought. "I think so, yeah. From studying biochemistry, I've read all sorts of studies about the weird, inhospitable places we've discovered microbial life, and it's not just surviving, it's _thriving_. So it makes sense that out there, where it's so big and unpredictable, there would be some other form of life. Even if it's not as advanced as we are."

He almost laughed thinking of all the times Zim had figuratively (and literally) spat on humanity for its meagerness in the face of the Irken race. "Okay. Do you believe in the possibility that aliens _are _as advanced as us and have come here seeking contact?"

"You mean like UFOs and those conspiracy theories about Area 51?" Liz asked. She blew air out through her lips. "I'm not so sure about that. Pretty much every piece of UFO footage I've seen has been debunked. And with all our satellites and radar technology, I feel like we'd know pretty quick if something from _out there_ showed up in our airspace."

"But what if they came in disguise and managed to blend in with society?" Dib asked. "Do you think it's possible that they're already living among us, studying us, plotting our collective doom?"

"Okay, you're losing me a little," Liz said.

Dib took a deep breath. "Then I'll just say it: I went to school with an alien. From outer space." He shut his eyes and waited several agonizing seconds for her response.

"What?" she said.

"I know, I know it sounds crazy. People have been calling me crazy my whole life," Dib said. "But I promise I'm not lying to you. Like, the reason I have prosthetics? I didn't get into some fluke accident; I was trying to stop him from tunneling into the Earth with acid and he almost killed me. He was actually with me when I was here on the tour, curled up in the backseat of my car! That's a whole other story, but—,"

"Stop, I need you to slow down," Liz said, putting a hand on her head. "I really don't know how to handle this."

"I'm sorry," Dib said. "I get it if you don't believe me. The whole story is absolute insanity. I only brought it up because…" he paused as a meteor blinked across the sky. "Because he left. And I think about him a lot. I wonder where he is out there and if he's ever gonna come back. He was this massive, crazy part of my life and now he's just…gone."

"Wait, this guy tried to kill you and you miss him?" Liz asked.

Dib finally looked at her. "Do you _believe_ me?" he asked, amazed.

She sighed. "I really don't know. We haven't known each other that long, but you don't strike me as a pathological liar or a schizophrenic. So…how 'bout you tell me the story, from the beginning. Then I can decide."

Dib had to force himself to blink and close his mouth again. "Oh…okay. Well, uh…I guess it started when I was 11."

"Jesus," Liz said. She picked up the bottle of Kahlua and drank straight from it.

For the first time in his life, Dib told the story of how a strange green kid named Zim started attending his school, but nobody else thought it was weird. He told her about the first time he saw Zim without his disguise, his numerous attempts to sneak into the underground base, the time a second invader came and nearly took over the planet with a giant weenie stand, and how eventually the games went too far and cost him his arm and leg. He told her about their cross-country road trip and how by the end of it he and Zim were as close to being friends as they could be. And he told her about how, because of his leaders and his own destructive pride, Zim had left as abruptly as he'd come a little over one year ago.

By the time he finished, Dib realized two things. First, they had probably missed a great deal of the meteor shower. Second, he had inadvertently taken a step toward granting Zim's wish that his story be passed on, _in some primitive human fashion. _

And a third thing, actually.

"That's the craziest thing I've ever heard," Liz said. "And either you're just as crazy as that story to tell it like that…or it's true. Dib…"

He swallowed. "Yeah?"

She looked him in the eye. "I believe you. As a scientist-in-training, I know I really, really shouldn't. But, I dunno…something…just tells me it's real."

Dib's heart punched at his ribs; he felt light-headed. "Okay, it's my turn to ask if you're lying," he said.

Liz laughed and shook her head. She reached out and took his hand, and Dib thought he minded more than she did that it was his prosthetic one—he couldn't feel her warmth.

"I'm not if you're not."

* * *

**Author Note: **HEY I'M BAAAAAAAAAAACK. Sorry this took me longer than anticipated to post. Life sure does like to get busy alllllllll at once. Also, this story went through a crazy amount of revisions - it barely looks like what I originally had planned, but that's a good thing (I think). Even though I'm still not completely done with it. Close, but not quite there. Anyway, thanks for being patient, and thanks for favoriting/following/reviewing "Leaving Home" in the interval! And get ready for the pain train ;)


	2. Chapter 1

"Hey! Come on, soldier, wake up!"

Someone had a grip on his uniform and was yelling incessantly, which he was _not_ happy about. He wanted to push them away, but he couldn't tell where his arms were. He couldn't tell where any of his body was, except for the parts being vigorously shaken by that insufferable voice.

Voice. He knew where that was.

"Ssssssssssssssstop stop stop!"

A gasp. He fell back, suddenly released, and hit the ground. His eyelids fluttered open, his entire body aware of itself again as it lay on the pebbly grit of…wherever he was.

A face leaned over his and he was overcome by the scent of a female. A female he knew.

"T-Tak?" he said.

Tak backed off. "How do you know my name? Who are you?"

This made him angry. If he could recognize the likes of her, surely she should know who _he_ was.

"I-I…am…ZIM!" he yelled.

To his chagrin, she laughed. "You really are delusional. No one would ever claim to be so short or moronic."

"Eh?" Zim grunted. He wobbled to his feet.

"Easy now!" Tak yelled, standing as well.

Were they the same height?

She gasped. "W-wait! Where—where's your PAK?"

His eyes went wide and he twisted his arm to prod at his shoulder blades and the strangely empty space between them. A thought sped down the familiar highway from his brain to his spinal column to the center of his back, where it splattered into a wall that had never been there before. And it was like his body splattered along with it. A fiery pain encased the place where his PAK should have been and he collapsed in the dirt, limbs shaking. A strange sound happened—was he the one who made that high, shaking moan?—and a froth bubbled up in his mouth. His lungs burned for oxygen but he couldn't breathe.

Someone was shoving something cold and round against his back.

"Why did you take your PAK off for so long, you fool?" Tak yelled. Then, panicked, to herself, "oh, why won't it _reattach?"_

The shaking worsened and Zim felt like every part of his body, from his organs to his fingers to his jaw, was clenching up as hard as it could. His eyes rolled back as he began to seize.

"Ship!" Tak barked. "Get us to my encampment over the ridge!"

"Yes, my master," a tinnier version of Tak's voice replied. Zim hardly registered that he was been scooped up by something—the ship, he supposed. The only thought he could muster was the realization that he was dying. Or that he hoped he was.

"Stay with me!" Tak called to him. She pushed him onto his stomach so she could try in vain to reattach his PAK again.

But with his face pressed into the cool, smooth floor of the ship, Zim's mind caved in on itself. Like an elevator shaft in a collapsing building, he fell past floor after floor, but each floor was a period of his life, a memory. He was shocked into existence by robotic appendages, yearning for the surface of Irk as a curious smeet, yearning next for the approval of Tallest after Tallest, destroying as a means to be seen, escaping one banishment only to be sent hurtling toward another, watching someone, someone very special, staring up at him as he soared away, going toward…

The ground.

Air rushed into his lungs like the inverse of a scream. He opened his eyes and was suddenly back inside himself. Only now being inside himself felt different. It was no longer a split of information, of _being_, between his brain and his PAK, because his PAK wasn't there. It was just all of him, all at once, contained by a fragile body and a throbbing, oxygen-starved brain.

He was on his side, tongue lolling out. Then he felt hands—Tak's hands—moving him onto his back. He took a breath on his own and gagged at the garbage-scented air. But he kept breathing and his muscles relaxed fully, the pain in his back subsiding. He was careful not to think any of the usual prompts he might give to his PAK since that seemed to trigger whatever fit he'd just gone through.

"How is this possible?" Tak breathed, voicing his thoughts for him.

He shook his head, still panting.

"Who are you?" she asked again.

He swallowed even though his throat was dry. "I am Zim," he said. And he was. Perhaps more than he'd ever been before.

They reached the camp before either of them could continue. It was a series of poles and ratty tarps, but it seemed to guard well enough against the gusts of foul wind that blew ceaselessly over the planet's surface. Inside, Zim caught a glimpse of GIR chasing after another SIR unit, which he remembered being called MIMI. They vanished again before Zim could call out to him.

Tak helped Zim out of the ship and sat him against a metal crate. She summoned one of her PAK legs and shot a laser beam at a pile of detritus in the center of the floor. It was ablaze in seconds. She returned to his side, crouching next to him. Her mouth was slightly ajar as she took in his scent.

Her already narrow eyes grew narrower. "You smell like him. And you sound like him. But…" she looked down at him, shaking her head. "It just can't _be."_

"Master," the ship said hesitantly. "I don't mean to contradict, but…that is in fact the defective, Zim."

"You don't always have to preface my name that way, you insufferable hunk of space junk," Zim growled, albeit weakly.

Tak stood and approached the ship, crossing her arms. "Provide me with evidence of your claim, then, so I can finally tear out his squeedlyspooch with my bare hands."

Zim let his head fall back against the crate. He'd just survived removing his PAK and whatever ailment had followed, but now he was probably going to die anyway. If he'd known he was going to be alive when the ship found its way to Tak, he wouldn't have allowed it to chart that course. But now here he was, sitting in her camp with no way to defend himself because…

Because he was alive. Without his PAK.

One fact he held in his mind above all others, just like any good Irken soldier, was that if you were separated from your PAK, you'd be smeet food in ten minutes. Sure, you could voluntarily remove it for a slightly longer time frame if you had to do repairs, but his health had been so poor by the time he'd taken his off that the point should've been moot. Was there some other secret PAK function he hadn't known about? Had he just gotten lucky?

Or, just like so many other parts of his existence, maybe the Ten Minutes of Doom were a lie. Maybe you _could_ survive without a PAK, but that knowledge wasn't something the average Irken was meant to have. But why would it be such a closely guarded secret? What else was there about his own body, his own life, to be discovered?

He'd have to return to this mental pathway another time. Tak was returning, holding his defunct PAK in her hands.

"This," she said. "Is the PAK of Irken Zim. In other words, you. You chose to remove it, but you've been separated from it for months, so it's physically impossible for you to be alive. Care to explain how you're here?"

Zim looked down at his hands and realized that his gloves and the sleeves of his uniform were loose despite his apparent growth. A sudden, gnawing hunger jolted through his body and he clutched at his abdomen.

"I require rations. You have some in this pathetic camp, I assume?" he asked.

"Yes," Tak said. "But I'm not giving you anything until you answer my questions. Actually, I don't think I'll give them to you even when you do answer. As soon as I get the information I want, I'm turning your freakish, PAK-less body into a trashcan."

"You're not very persuasive," Zim said. "Probably why you never rose to the rank of Invader like me."

Tak struck him across the face and he hit the dirt. The sting on his cheek was all he needed to know that she'd broken the skin with her claws, even beneath her gloves. Briefly, he wondered how long it would take to heal without his PAK.

"Again, not persuasive," he groaned.

She yanked him up by the collar of his uniform. "Start talking."

He pushed her hand away and rested his back (his strange, empty back) against the crate. "If you got the details from your ship, you know as much as I do. I removed my PAK because it was barely functional and I had…resigned myself to death. Waking up after that is as much of a shock to me as it is to you."

"I see," she said. "You have nothing of value to offer me. Well then."

All four of Tak's PAK legs crept out and brandished their sharpened spear-ends at him like the fangs of a giant beast.

"On the contrary," Zim gasped before she could skewer him. "I think I _do_ have something to offer."

"Sure you do," Tak said, smiling as her PAK legs edged closer.

"No, really, think about it," he said. "I somehow managed to survive the removal of my PAK. What if…what if all Irkens can do it? What if _you_ could survive without yours?"

"And _why _would I want to do that?" she asked.

Zim glanced at their drab surroundings. "Without your PAK, you're untraceable. If you're untraceable, you don't have to stay on this horrible planet any longer. You can do whatever you want."

Tak narrowed her eyes at him but retracted her PAK legs. "Why should I listen to anything a defective has to say?"

"Because this _defective_ is unlocking secrets beyond the realm of possibility just by existing," Zim said. "And you owe Zim a favor for bringing your ship back."

"I mean, technically I brought myself here. You just did a lousy attempt at suicide," the ship said.

"Silence!" Zim said.

Tak tapped her foot for a few moments, then crossed her arms, growling as she turned away from him.

The ship spoke up again, like a projection of Tak's own mind. "He…_is_ an anomaly that could be worth studying. For our benefit, of course."

Tak turned back to Zim. "Fine. We will look into this affront to everything we know about ourselves as Irkens. But if you annoy me any more than you already have, I'll kill you."

Zim crossed his own arms. "Not if you annoy _me_ enough to kill _you_ first."

Just then, GIR and MIMI came screaming into the room. They tumbled over one another before MIMI used her larger hand appendage to grab GIR's face and slam him into the ground. GIR just kept on laughing. Zim and Tak met eyes and she smiled smugly. He gritted his teeth and tried to accept what he'd just gotten himself into.


	3. Chapter 2

There were drawbacks to being PAK-less. One of the biggest, Zim quickly discovered, was that it was very difficult to breathe. The atmosphere on Dirt was thin and far less oxygenated than Earth or Irk. It was a cold planet made colder by the horrible, dusty gale storms that rolled across the foul-smelling landscape. The dust would accumulate in Zim's lungs until he could only take in shallow breaths, at which point he would beat himself in the abdomen or back until he hacked out an organ-moistened cylinder of silt. GIR called them his "puke-y spells." He tore off a section of tarp that hung over the encampment and kept it tied like a bandana over his mouth for some relief.

Perhaps worse than the breathing difficulties was the terrible pain that occurred whenever he accidentally tried to activate his PAK. On his first night on Dirt, as he attempted to climb into the cockpit of Tak's ship to rest, the command for his PAK legs to help lift him up escaped his exhausted mind. He made it into the ship, collapsing on the floor as his muscles clenched and the old empty ports on his back screamed with fire. Then his eyes landed on Dib's CD case and, through the pain, he remembered one of their nights travelling together; they had stopped at a motel and he had noticed Dib massaging at the remaining portion of his leg. When he'd asked Dib about it, the boy had said, "It's really fucking uncomfortable."

Now Zim wondered if this was the kind of excruciation Dib went through every time he took a step or put his hand on the steering wheel of that stinking vehicle. Shaking, he reached for the case and clutched it to his chest as the tides of his pain receded back into his skull. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ ran like a gerbil on an endless wheel in his mind. It was only when his body relaxed again that he realized he'd been saying it out loud.

That was the first night Zim tried sleeping with a CD on in the background. Even though he was exhausted from two bouts of PAK withdrawal or phantom PAK syndrome or whatever it was that kept happening, his mind was still racing, stuck on the uncanny reality that he was alive. Finally, desperate for rest, he opened the case and choose a disc called "Patsy Cline" (or maybe that was the name of the singer) because it had a track list with sleepy titles like "Walkin' After Midnight" and "Sweet Dreams (Of You)." If nothing else, like Dib had once said, listening would help pass the time. But, sure enough, the dreary female voice lulled him to sleep after only three songs.

It was annoying, how much he had to sleep. It made him feel like a human, wasting so much time unconscious. But it was as if some long-dormant rhythm had begun ticking in his body, causing him unshakeable weariness the moment the last daylight faded from the brown horizon. He was usually unconscious for seventeen of the nineteen hours of darkness that composed a night on Dirt. Not that it mattered terribly—he found it impossible to function in the bitter nighttime cold without his PAK to regulate his bodily temperature.

Well, it didn't matter to _him_, anyway.

At the end of his first week on Dirt, he awoke to the cockpit opening. Tak's shadow stood over him, glowering.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked.

He grimaced at the smell of garbage that accompanied her intrusion. "I _was_ sleeping."

"You slept yesterday and the day before that," she said. "You can't possibly need any more rest. Not when you just sit around fiddling with that PAK all day."

"Easy for you to say, with your energy regulation system still intact," he groaned, sitting up. "And shut the cockpit if you're going to keep bothering me. It's freezing."

"In that case, I'm leaving it open," she said.

Zim just growled in frustration and retreated further into the ship to get away from the frigid air. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.

Tak's antennae rose and dropped again. "What are these sounds coming from my ship?"

"It's music. Earth music."

"Mewww-sick," she grumbled. "Why would you claim such a pointless artifact?"

"It was given to me by the Dib-human. You met him. Smelly trench coat, big head?"

"Ah," she said, remembering. "So, he planted it here as a prank to annoy you. Humans are such weak-minded creatures."

"It was a gift, actually," he said. "I sleep best when it plays."

The firelight made every wrinkle of her disgust stand out in sharp relief. "Then you're just as soft as they are. Hard to believe you were once the scourge of our civilization. Now you're no better than an old, stale Cheezo."

"Don't act like you're some peppy young smeet," he growled. "Once you take your PAK off, you'll be just like Zim."

It may have just been the flickering light, but it looked like a shudder went through her body. "I never said I would do it, only that I wanted to know if it's possible. I won't risk my life on a fluke incident."

"Of course not. That would take _guts."_

A PAK leg shot out and speared the wall next to his head. Tak squatted down in front of him, locking him in her gaze.

"It would also be a shame to lose such elegant, deadly weapons that can ensnare my enemies with a single thought," she leaned in closer. "How does it feel, to be so harmless? Like a little bug I could squash under my boots?"

He swallowed. "I'm not little anymore. We're the same height."

"We are not."

"Yes we are. I could tell when I stood next to you the other day."

"Then your ocular implants must be defective just like the rest of you."

"Have the ship measure us. I guarantee we're the same."

Tak retracted her PAK leg, grabbed his arm, and yanked him roughly to a stand along with her. "Ship!" she barked. "Take a scan of us both and relay which of us is the superior height."

"Yes, master," the ship said. A thin blue beam of light shot out from the control panel and scanned them, starting at their feet and going all the way to the tips of their antennae while they stood as straight and tall as they could. The readouts displayed on the panel and Zim was devastated to see that Tak was exactly one millimeter taller than him.

Tak planted her hands on her hips triumphantly. "Sorry, little Zim. Looks like I'm still the better Irken."

"I'll bet you went up on your toes at the last second," Zim pouted, crossing his arms and staring at the floor.

"I don't need to cheat to be better than you."

"Says the wretch who tried to steal my mission."

But she was hopping out of the cockpit, headed back toward the fire. She waved over her shoulder at him. "Thanks for making my night! Have fun with your little loser nap!"

He slammed a button on the control panel and the cockpit hissed shut. Eager to return to sleep, he laid back down. His eyes fell on the hole in the wall that her PAK leg had left behind. He sighed, relieved that his height wager had distracted her from killing him.

To answer her question, it felt terrible, being so weak; like a little bug someone could squash under their boots. Then again, as a bug who'd spent his life in a jar, running out of air as he sat on a shelf for entertainment, a quick, sticky death beneath someone's heel sounded almost merciful.


	4. Chapter 3

In spite of the physical setbacks, there was one major perk of being PAK-less. Because of his inexplicable growth, Zim was unrecognizable amongst his people. He had first discovered this when he arrived on Dirt and Tak had failed to identify him. He got to test his theory again at the end of his second week on Dirt.

Ordinarily, Tak would be gone all day and most of the night performing her janitorial duties. Zim rarely saw her, which was a good thing given their conversation the previous week. On this day, however, she returned in the early afternoon. She was riding MIMI, which meant she was in a hurry.

"We had a supply drop," Tak said, throwing a tarp over the guts of Zim's PAK. "You need to hide or something. And turn that noise off!" She yelled at the ship, which promptly obeyed, the jazzy notes of Hall & Oates falling into silence.

"Good, we just ran out of snack rations," Zim said. "I need at least two a day to do my work."

Tak gave him a disgusted look and shoved him off the barrel he was sitting on. Then her antennae pricked up and she turned around; a cloud of dust was growing in the distance, and the sound of an engine became clearer. Seconds later, a cargo craft was kicking up dirt outside their encampment. A single male Irken manned it.

Tak stepped out calmly and saluted him. "Drone Pog," she said.

"Drone Tak," he responded. He didn't salute back, instead hopping out of the cockpit and rounding the open-backed trailer. He tapped a battered-looking crate and it floated over to land heavily at Tak's feet.

"It fell out a few times on the way over," Pog said. He spat into the dust.

Tak ignored the comment, saluting again. "My thanks for the delivery. I'll take it from here."

Pog took a half-step back toward the cargo craft but paused. "Who's that?" he asked.

Tak whipped around and jumped when she saw Zim walking out of the camp. She turned back to Pog. "Oh, he's just—he's, uh—"

"Dib," Zim said, pleased that his hypothesis was correct. "Drone Dib." He and Pog saluted one another.

"I guess you're new," Pog said. "Otherwise you wouldn't have chosen to team up with this wannabe Invader."

This immediately piqued Zim's interest. Pog had to be talking about the time Tak tried to steal Earth from him, and it apparently had made her the local laughingstock. Eager for some leverage against her after her victory in the height wager, he said, "Wannabe Invader? Oh, do tell." He could practically feel the rage radiating off of Tak and had to bite his lip to keep from giggling.

By Pog's ravenous smile, Zim knew that this story was his favorite. "So a few cycles back, she gets the brilliant idea that she's gonna build a ship and go take over a planet. But not just any planet—_Zim's_ planet! I know you know who that moron is, so I won't bore you with the details. But, anyway, we all tell her not to do it because it's a dud mission, so even if she does make it out there, it's pointless. Well, she pulls it off—builds a ship and sets out for whatever godforsaken planet he got tossed out to. But then she just proves her defectiveness by getting beaten by Zim! _Zim!_ So then the Tallest have to send a squad _all_ the way out to the buttcrack of the galaxy to pick her up in her dinky little escape pod and she winds up right back here! But now she's _banished!"_ He broke into a fit of laughter and couldn't go on.

Zim didn't join in. It was foolish to think that he wouldn't hear his name slandered in a story about Tak's botched revenge mission. But more than the sting of hearing his people speak poorly of him to his face, he was grappling with the fact that Pog had called her defective. And that she was now banished to Dirt, making her effectively the same as him. He looked over at Tak who, though still seething, had her head bent to the ground, facing away from him.

"Pretty pathetic, right?" Pog asked, wiping his eyes as he recovered himself.

"It is…unfortunate," Zim said when he found his voice again.

Pog's antennae twitched up in confusion. "Well, don't feel _bad_ about it. It's supposed to be a funny story."

"Banishment is not a laughing matter."

Pog scoffed. "Geez, I thought you were alright until—," he cut himself off, jaw hanging open. "H-hey! Where's your PAK?"

Zim glanced back, still not completely used to his bare shoulders himself.

Surprisingly, Tak interjected. "He has it disengaged for maintenance."

Pog relaxed. "Well, hurry and get it back on. You're going soft in the head," he said, then turned to address Tak. "Keep tabs on that one so he doesn't wind up banished like you."

Tak saluted and Pog re-entered the craft's cockpit. He looked out at her one last time.

"Oh, one more thing," he said. "I don't know if this will make your banishment feel better or worse, which is why I'm telling you: when this shipment came in, we heard the Tallest finally managed to kill that defective, Zim. Shame you couldn't do it yourself, right?" With that he laughed and kicked the old cargo craft into gear, blasting away and covering them both with dust.

"Well, you've done it," Tak said, batting dirt off of her uniform. "You hit the rock bottom of stupidity and found a way to dig deeper."

"I don't want to hear anything about stupidity from you," Zim shot back. "Especially when you're just avoiding _something else."_

Tak glared at him, but as she often did, she just ignored him and went into the tent. He followed close behind and grabbed her arm.

"You're defective," he said. "Just like me!"

She wrenched herself away from him. "I'm nothing like you."

"Are too!" he said. "You're defective and you're banished, so stop acting like you're better than me."

"Status doesn't matter when you've brought your own civilization to the brink of collapse. Twice!"

"Actually, I think my Existence Evaluation makes three. Did you get any news about that, maybe half a cycle ago? I'm sure word made its way out here."

She shook her head, bristling. "If you keep talking, I'll kill you. But know this: I am _not_ defective."

"Then take your PAK off right now and prove it," Zim said.

This seemed to rattle her. "What?"

"If you're really not defective, then something about your PAK structure will be different from mine. If they're the same, it means you're defective. Either way, we'll be one step closer to understanding what these things are," he said.

"I'm not removing my perfectly functional PAK just so you can fail to prove your point," she growled.

Zim would have countered her again, but something she said connected like lightning with a flag pole in his brain. Perfectly functional. Perfect. The opposite of defective. Therefore, to be defective and perfect at the same time would be paradoxical, impossible. As impossible as surviving without a PAK supposedly was. So then, was it an impossibility? Or just another lie?

"Something…occurred to me just now," Zim said.

"Oh? Finally acknowledging that I'm right?" Tak said.

Zim locked eyes with her. "What if there's no such thing as defective?"

Doubtful creases formed on her forehead.

He kept going. "My PAK was also perfectly functional before my Existence Evaluation. The Control Brains short-circuiting fried some of the wiring, and the hard destruct of my base crippled it even further. Before that…there was nothing wrong with it. But I was 'defective' that whole time. Even though I was perfect. How does that make any sense? Don't even say anything, because it doesn't," he said when she opened her mouth. "This whole time I've been digging through that PAK, searching for _something_ wrong with it and coming up empty other than problems caused by those two events. So, what if…all along, I was never…" his eyes, which had fallen to his hands, flew back up to Tak. "We need to look at your PAK."

"No, I already told you, no," Tak said, though she sounded less sure of herself. "Everything you just said is speculation, not even a real theory. No, I'll just prove myself here and then the Tallest will end my banishment and—,"

"Look at me, Tak," he said. Despite the cold, he tugged up his uniform and showed her the black, charred flesh around where his PAK had been, the two warped and melted portholes where the wires had once slipped inside to connect with his spinal column. "This is what happens when you try to get out of banishment. No matter what you do or say, the Tallest will never think of you as any more than a janitorial drone. It's in your code and they'll never change it. So you have two options: die trying to impress our leaders, who have lied to us about _everything_…or trust me."

"That's the _least_ persuasive thing you've ever said," she replied. There was an almost imperceptible crack in her voice.

"So you'll think about it?" he said, antennae perking up.

Her eyes narrowed and she shouldered past him. She called for MIMI and mounted the little robot, ready to jet away. "Get these rations inside. Since you're the one who _eats_ them all," she said. In a shockwave of dust, she was gone.


	5. Chapter 4

Whatever Tak's feelings were about removing her PAK, they didn't have much time for debate. Just two days after the supply drop, Pog returned to the camp with the first light of day.

Tak went out to meet him. "Drone Pog," she saluted.

"Out of my way," Pog growled, shoving past her. Zim had covered up his PAK again and stood between Pog and the makeshift table where he'd been working.

"You have some explaining to do," Pog said, jabbing a finger at Zim.

"Eh?" Zim said.

"Nobody back at the base has ever heard of a 'Drone Dib' before," Pog said. "And another janitorial squad isn't being sent here for another quarter cycle. So: how exactly did you get here, and why?"

Zim swallowed. "Those are _very_ good questions that I have _very_ good answers to. You see—,"

"And your PAK is off again!" Pog exclaimed. He grabbed the gun hanging at his hip, pointing it at Zim. "What's going on here?"

Zim was about to answer, but suddenly the bladed edge of a PAK leg was sticking out between his eyes, dripping pink. It retracted and, mouth ajar, Pog fell to the ground. Tak stood not far behind him, breathing heavily.

Zim clutched his head in his hands. "You killed him!"

"He was asking too many questions!" she yelled. "And I didn't like him anyway."

"Well, neither did I, but now there's a dead—," Zim jumped when the legs of Pog's PAK suddenly sprang out, hoisting the limp body into the air. The corpse hung suspended for a moment before it released, falling back into the dust like an empty sack. The PAK scanned the area and, with a high beeping, began crawling toward Zim.

It was searching for a new host.

Zim shrieked and jumped behind the table that held his own PAK. He picked up a wrench and hurled it at the disembodied PAK, then a rock, then another rock.

"Will you _stop_ it!" Tak yelled, ducking as the second rock sailed past her head. She was crouching by Pog's body, yanking the gun from his already stiffened hand. She aimed, fired. The PAK fell to the ground, sparking.

Zim sighed in relief, dropping the ration bar he'd been planning to throw next.

"Glad _one_ of us has good aim," Tak said. She walked over to the PAK and tapped it a few times with the toe of her boot. It remained unresponsive.

"Yes. Good for Zim," he said. "But now you have to remove your PAK."

She was taken aback. "What? Why?"

"I don't know, maybe because you _murdered_ another Irken when you're already deemed defective and banished?" he said. "All that data will be sent back to the Tallest and you'll be hailed for an Existence Evaluation soon after, which you _will not_ survive. And you can't run away unless your PAK has been disengaged."

"Why do you even care? Why not just run off without me?" she asked.

Zim paused, unsure of how to answer. Then something Dib had said to him just before he left Earth resurfaced. "Because you and I…we're not so different. And if we work together…maybe we could get revenge on the Tallest. Then no Irken would have to be defective anymore."

At first Tak looked doubtful, but she softened, putting her hands on her hips. "Revenge _is_ nice."

"And we'll have it," Zim said. "But you need to take off your PAK so we can run."

She came up to him and grabbed his uniform in her fist, pulling his face close to her own. "If I die, I give my ship permission to kill you."

"Yes, ma'am!" the ship said enthusiastically.

After that, it was a scramble to get ready. They gathered up GIR and MIMI, Zim's PAK and the husk of Pog's, and as many snack rations and other supplies as they could cram into the cockpit of Tak's ship. Tak began the boot up process for the ship but Zim stopped her.

"I'll man the controls," he said. "You need to take off your PAK before we go anywhere."

She tried to look angry at him, but Zim knew she was afraid. Because, even though he'd accepted what he thought his fate would be when he removed his own PAK, he'd felt afraid, too. He also knew that she was still feeling doubts: what if Zim _was_ a special case and not everyone could live without a PAK? Would her pain be as excruciating as his? How long would it take to learn to live without it?

He didn't know how to comfort her, because he'd never really comforted anyone before, so he said something to motivate her instead. "Oh, come on. Do you really wanna live with the knowledge that Zim is braver than you?"

It worked. Tak screwed up her face and got out of the pilot chair. She walked as far into the cockpit as she could and took a deep breath. Her PAK clattered to the ground. Then she sat down against a crate, jolting at the feeling of her entire back pressing against it, and closed her eyes.

"Aw, not this again!" GIR said.

"Play your game thing, GIR," Zim said. "We're taking a long trip."

"Okee dokee!" GIR replied. He pulled the GameSlave out of his head and began button-mashing. MIMI, who had been looking worriedly at Tak, also became interested and sat beside him atop a crate, watching. Zim completed the boot-up process and moments later they were leaving the atmosphere of Dirt behind. For some reason, as he dialed in the coordinates of their course, his hands were shaking.


	6. Chapter 5

It took them two months to reach Cyberflox. Tak remained comatose for the entirety of the voyage and didn't wake up after they landed, either. Zim found an abandoned warehouse to hide them in and, while the ship monitored her vitals, he busied himself by studying the three PAKs: his, Tak's, and Pog's, which would be a control (despite the damage from being shot) since Pog had not been deemed defective.

So far, he'd found no differences between the three PAKs. It seemed that his theory about defectiveness being fake was correct. But he still had to wonder why, if his PAK was not defective, the data in it had crippled the Control Brains. And why had he grown after he took his PAK off? These were mysteries he wasn't sure he'd be able to solve, but still he pushed onward.

At least on Cyberflox it was easier to work. The air in the warehouse was stale, but far cleaner than the constant dust he'd been breathing on Dirt. It was warmer, too, so he could work on the PAKs day or night, until he fell asleep at the work table he'd made out of old steel paneling and barrels. But beyond the more accommodating environment, what motivated Zim most was the idea that someday he'd be able to report all that he'd learned to Dib. He got the same tightness in his squeedlyspooch when he thought about it that he used to get on reporting calls with the Tallest. It should have disturbed him that another person, rather than a mission, was driving him forward, but it didn't. Whether that was another effect of being PAK-less, he couldn't say. Not yet.

Today, just as Zim was removing a tiny, paper-thin microchip from Pog's PAK, a scream rang out from inside Tak's ship. He dropped the microchip and his tweezers into the dust at his feet and scrambled to pick them up again. The ship began beeping frantically and Zim rushed over.

Her screaming had stopped, but Tak was folded in on herself on the floor of the ship, shaking. It was her first experience with Phantom PAK Syndrome (or Fanny PAKs, as GIR called it). She would be in its clutches for several minutes. Thinking back to his first time, Zim pushed her onto her side so she wouldn't choke on her tongue and kept tabs on her breathing.

Finally, Tak's body relaxed and her breathing evened out. As he moved her onto her back, her eyes opened slowly and she stared up at him. He leaned over her, waiting.

And then she punched him in the face.

"Owwwww! Why?" he groaned, clutching his face in his hands.

"You startled me," she said. With effort, she made it to her feet. Zim righted himself as well and was shocked—but secretly thrilled—to find that they were still the same height. He had assumed that growth was a natural occurrence after PAK removal, but Tak now disproved that theory. And deepened the mystery.

"You didn't grow," he said.

Tak looked down at herself and groaned in disappointment. "That was the _one_ thing I was looking forward to." Shaking her head, she walked gingerly to the front of the cockpit and looked outside.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Cyberflox," Zim said.

She glared at him. "Well now you really deserve that punch. You brought us to _Cyberflox?"_

"We're outside of Irken control. It's the safest place we _could_ be," Zim said. "And, besides, if we're going to take down the Tallest, we need supplies and big, deadly weapons. We can find both of those things here."

"We're also two PAK-less Irkens on a planet full of murderers and bounty-hunters," she said. "How are we supposed to defend ourselves if someone comes after us?"

"We'll just take GIR and MIMI with us whenever we leave the base," he said, indicating the warehouse around them. "Simple as that."

"MIMI, yes," Tak said. "But I'm not going anywhere with _your_ pathetic excuse for a SIR-unit."

"I'll have you know that GIR's helped me out of trouble more times than I can count," Zim growled. "Wherever we go, he goes."

"You're impossible," she sighed. Then she tried to get out of the cockpit and her legs gave out; she fell to the warehouse floor with a yelp. Zim hopped down after her and pushed himself beneath her arm as she tried to get up. She hissed in protest, but he ignored her and helped her stand. Eager to show someone his work, he walked her over to the work table and sat her down. In the process, however, he managed to get his antenna tangled with hers.

"You've got to be joking," she growled, jerking her head away from his.

"OW, STOP!" Zim yelled, eyes watering from the sting.

"Just get off me!"

"I'm trying! Hold still!"

She crossed her arms and finally stopped moving. Zim pressed the side of his head against hers and ran his fingers along the length of his antenna until he found where it became jumbled with Tak's. He was apprehensive about touching her antenna, one of the most important and sensitive parts of the Irken anatomy, but it was necessary to help his own slip free. Even just having his head against hers felt too intimate. The only time Irkens invaded each other's space was to fight. At least, that's the only experience he had with it.

For some reason, as Zim untwisted Tak's antenna from his, one of the songs from Dib's CDs popped into his head; it was called "Put Your Head on My Shoulder." It fit the situation—her head was kind of close to his shoulder. He was probably just thinking about it to get his mind off of the awkwardness. That's what he wanted to think, anyway, as his face grew steadily warmer.

His antenna finally slipped free. "Got it," he said.

"Great. Now get off," Tak said.

"Okay."

"Sometime today."

"Oh! Right," he pulled away from her, slicked back his antennae, and hastily walked to the other side of the table. He smoothed his hands over the work surface. "I've been working on the PAKs while you were…indisposed."

"Your findings?" she asked, massaging her antenna between her fingers.

"All three are the same. I've found no differences in their circuitry, their functionality…nothing," he said.

Now she looked truly interested. "So…we're not defective, then? It's really all just a lie?"

He gestured to her. "You're alive. I'm alive. These PAKs are the same. Yes, I'd say we were lied to."

She shook her head, at first in disbelief, then in anger. In a flash of movement, she banged a fist on the table, causing the tools and PAK parts to jump and rattle.

"All that time," she said. "All that time I spent working myself _insane_ trying to prove I wasn't defective. And it never even meant anything in the first place. How could they do this to me?"

"To us," Zim said.

Tak glared at him. "You _deserved_ your banishment. And I don't care that our PAKs are the same. There's something wrong with you, but it's not because of some faulty bit of wiring."

Zim's eyes fell to the PAK parts strewn across the table. He'd been so caught up in dissecting the PAKs and contemplating the ways his had determined the course of his life that he'd forgotten about himself—the organic brain that still retained his memories, personality, ambitions, fears. Could he still be defective, but not because of his PAK? Was there something inherently wrong with who he was as a living, breathing thing?

"I highly doubt your extremely rude hypothesis is correct," Zim said. "But if there _is_ something different about me, it's made me very good at inconveniencing the Tallest. Now that I know all the lies they've told us, that's all I want to do. I'd like to do a lot worse, actually," he looked back up at Tak. "What do you think?"

Tak stared hard at him for a long, uncomfortable time. He could tell she was plotting her next move, and for a moment he was afraid that she might try to kill him and go her own way. That route was too dangerous, though, with her being freshly PAK-less on an unfamiliar world. Finally, she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms.

"Let's kill them," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Let's kill them."

Devilish, conspiratorial grins spread across their faces. It was the first time they'd ever smiled at each other.

* * *

**Author Note: **TWO this time because the last one was on the shrimpy side. Also, I've changed the title of the story! I usually try to wait until I've finished a story before I settle on a title, but since I started posting this before it was done, I used the first thing that I thought fit the story's core theme. BUT I think "Unity" does a better job...and is also less clunky than "Self-Discovery."

Also Enter the Florpus came out last week and I AM LIVING THAT SHIT WAS SO GOOD THANK YOU JHONEN! I've never been more "back on my bullshit" than I am right now holy shit. K I'm done now.

WAIT NO I'M NOT! Thanks for the reviews, as usual. Y'all give me strength.


	7. Chapter 6

Tak insisted that they didn't leave the warehouse until they knew how to defend themselves without their PAKs. Their borrowed base had apparently been left in a hurry, because it was loaded with odds and ends that they fashioned into mazes and obstacle courses.

It was tricky to climb walls and leap hurdles without PAK assistance. Using the obstacle courses made it all the more evident to Zim how much he'd relied on his PAK for strenuous movement; losing it had essentially been losing a second set of powerful limbs that had worked in perfect harmony with his own. But even though wayward commands frequently slipped from his brain while he jumped and climbed, he found that his phantom syndrome was much more bearable, like he was building a tolerance to the sensation. Now he only experienced a burning sensation around the melted ports where his PAK used to be.

Tak had a harder time at first, since she'd lost her PAK more recently. More than once she was left writhing on the warehouse floor after she accidentally prompted her PAK to deploy its legs. But she ran the courses unflaggingly, often until she could barely move, and soon her own syndrome had been reduced to the same burning Zim experienced.

Tak was a more skilled jumper and climber than Zim because of how often she'd been forced to maneuver around debris on Dirt. Despite feeling the same sense of loss from being PAK-less, she seemed to understand the limits of her body better than he did.

Hand-to-hand combat, however, was Zim's forte. The years of punching and wrestling practice with Dib while in disguise and unable to use his PAK had sharpened his skills. Fighting was usually how he and Tak ended the day—they were so fed up with one another at that point that it was a good way to blow off steam before going to sleep.

They set ground rules when they decided to practice fighting. Having no PAKs meant a much slower healing process, so breaking bones and slicing arteries were out of the question. There was to be no biting, clawing hard enough to cut the skin, or antenna pulling. At the end of the fight, they were to salute one another and walk away.

Not that that ever happened.

Today, they were fighting over the ship. Since Tak had recovered from PAK removal, she'd reclaimed the ship as her resting spot. Zim had been sleeping in a fort he'd made out of some crates and a tarp, which was uncomfortable and far too quiet—he'd become reliant on Dib's music to fall asleep. The last straw was when she told him he couldn't have anything playing while he worked on a diagram of his PAK.

Now they were circling one another, having just broken out of an awkward, hug-like gridlock from trying to shove each other to the ground. They breathed heavily, tongues lolling out. Tak rushed forward, swinging at Zim, who ducked out of the way and ran a shoulder into her stomach as he tackled her. She wheezed when they hit the ground, but when he tried throwing a punch, she quickly sat up and headbutted him in the mouth. Now he was on his back, and in a flash she was straddling him with her hands wrapped around his neck. He choked wildly and clawed at her face, breaking the skin on her cheek.

She reeled back, gasping. "No _claws!"_

"No _choking!"_ he wheezed.

She drew back an arm like she was going to punch him, so he used a hand and foot to roll them over—this started a dizzying spiral across the warehouse floor as they each tried to roll on top of the other. Finally, Zim managed to shove her off and scramble to his feet, but he promptly fell onto his stomach again when Tak grabbed his ankle and yanked his foot out from under him. She sat on top of him and broke another rule; she grabbed both of his antennae in her fist to pull his head back, then slammed his face into the floor, rubbing it from side to side.

The pain and anger were so intense that Zim couldn't hear anymore. He threw back an elbow, which connected with what he thought was Tak, and got onto his hands and knees when her weight left him. He spied her in his periphery, clutching her side, and leaped toward her. When he was on top of her, he clamped his teeth down as hard as he could on the first piece of her he could find—her forearm? Shoulder? Neck? He couldn't tell, but he knew it hurt because she was punching the top of his head.

Then cold metal came between them and Zim was shoved away. MIMI, their designated referee, had broken them apart. Now that he could finally hear again, he picked up on GIR laughing somewhere in the background, probably biting the head off of some creature he'd caught as a snack while he enjoyed the show. He was dizzy from all the blows to the head but staggered to his feet.

"I win," Zim said.

"It was a tie," Tak said, slumping against the wall. "And anyway, I _need_ the ship now, thanks to you." She'd been holding the upper part of her shoulder, near her neck, and when she pulled her hand away he could see dark spots on her clothes.

"Don't blame me," he said. "You're the one who yanked my antennae like some kind of barbarian!"

"You clawed my face!"

"Because you were choking me!"

"There aren't any rules about choking!"

"Then we should make one!" he yelled. "But that's a future Zim problem. Present Zim is going to have a nice long sleep in the ship."

"And what am I supposed to do?" she asked, wincing as she gripped at the wound.

"Sleep in a dusty, uncomfortable fort like I do every night," he said, already crossing the warehouse. "Sweet dreams!"

The ship opened its cockpit reluctantly, but Zim was feeling so proud of his win that he didn't care. He had it run a diagnostic: he was mildly concussed, with bruises and lacerations on his face, head and neck, but other than that his body was unscathed. It gave him the needed medicinal supplies and, once he'd doctored himself, he stretched and readied for sleep.

Then he glanced out and saw Tak by the firepit near their work station. She'd taken off her tunic to examine the wound, and even from far away, he could see the deep, dark bite he'd given her. He had to admit, it looked serious. It would likely get infected if it stayed open and untreated by the ship. Then she would be weak, which would make his life harder because she wouldn't be able to study the PAKs and help gather supplies to kill the Tallest with him. With a groan, he opened the cockpit.

"Come have the ship look at that," he called out to her.

Her antennae sprang up aggressively. "Oh? Suddenly feeling charitable?"

"Just get over here," he snapped. "I can't have you weakened by some weird space infection."

For a moment she just glared at him and he was convinced she was going to stay by the fire out of spite. But she stood, angrily grabbed her tunic, and stomped toward the ship.

"Looks like you _both_ broke rules today. Again," the ship said as it scanned her.

"He started it," Tak said at the exact moment Zim said, "She started it." The ship dispensed an antibiotic ointment and bandages. Tak slathered it on, hissing in discomfort, and started wrapping the bandages around herself. Because of the awkward location of the wound, she was having a hard time getting them to stay in place while also completely covering the mark.

"Let me do it," Zim said, reaching for the bandages.

Her eyes narrowed lethally.

"Oh, come on," he said. "I'll get it over with quick."

She sighed but lifted her arm, looking away from him. He took the roll of bandages and wrapped it under her arm, over her shoulder, and around her neck to help it stay in place. As he fastened it, he noticed that she hadn't put any ointment on the two claw marks he'd left on her cheek. Without thinking, he put a dollop on his finger and dabbed it on.

Tak jerked away from him, appalled.

Zim's face grew hot. "I was just…you didn't get…" he pointed to his own cheek, which had two light scars from the day Tak found him on Dirt. "We match now!" he said, laughing awkwardly.

She was silent. Slowly, she reached up and rubbed in the ointment he'd left on her cheek. Then she tugged her tunic back on, got to her feet, and started to leave.

"You don't—," Zim said, his mouth working before his brain could.

She looked back at him. "I don't _what?"_

He swallowed. "You don't have to sleep out there. Without the supplies in here, there's plenty of room. It's not like I'm some abhorrent stink monster."

She looked confused. "You _want_ me to sleep in here? With you? After the whole fight we just had?"

"Well, if you really want to sleep in the cold dusty fort, go ahead," he said angrily. He laid down on floor, crossing his arms and tucking in his legs.

"I will. I don't need your pity," she scoffed. The second the cockpit closed Zim sat back up and angrily thumbed through Dib's CD case for the Patsy Cline disc. At least he'd be able to sleep solidly for once.

Or so he thought. In spite of the music, he wound up tossing and turning. He nodded off once, after he screwed his eyes shut and tried memorizing the lyrics lilting around him. But he was woken up not long after, on the album's third go-round of "Crazy," when the cockpit opened. Tak's shadow stood in the opening.

"Don't say a word," she said.

He put his head back down and stared at the wall paneling, listening to the four footsteps it took her to get inside, the hiss of the cockpit closing, the rustle of her uniform as she laid down. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that she was in a similar position on the floor, her back facing him. When they breathed deeply at the same time, their empty backs touched. In the warmth of the ship, with the music and the gentle rhythm of her back pressing against his, Zim finally fell asleep.

It was the way they silently agreed to sleep every night after.


	8. Chapter 7

The day finally came when they had to go outside. They had only two days' worth of rations left, so they made makeshift cloaks out of the scratchy tarps laying around the warehouse and gathered up any junk that seemed like it might be worth something. With GIR and MIMI in tow, they ventured out.

Zim was glad that the hulking, endless buildings blocked out most of the sunlight—otherwise it probably would've burned his eyes from being indoors so long. They roamed the streets, keeping out of the way as best they could while searching for anyone who looked willing to buy. Eventually they found a globular tradesman who stuffed their items into his body, where they hung like fruit chunks in gelatin, in exchange for some monies.

In an alley, Tak looked down furiously at the sticky monies in her hand. "This will only buy us a week of rations. No way we'll be able to buy any of the other supplies we need."

"I told you we should've brought more stuff," Zim said, counting his own gooey pile.

_"This_ coming from the whiner who said his bag was too heavy," she scoffed. "Mine was heavier."

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

Something shifted further down the alley and their antennae shot up simultaneously. They stayed still, listening. Then they gathered up their monies and re-entered the street, which was thankfully quite crowded.

"MIMI," Tak said. "Keep your scanners on a twenty-foot radius of us."

MIMI's red eyes narrowed and a satellite-like antenna came out of her head, rotating and blinking.

"GIR," Zim said. "Scan a _thirty_-foot radius."

GIR looked at MIMI, then up at Zim. "I don't got one of those."

Zim smacked his forehead, which he regretted because of the stickiness left on his glove. "Then just watch behind us and make sure we aren't being followed."

"Okee dokee!" GIR said. His head performed a 180 degree turn while his body continued to move forward. Tak chuckled smugly and Zim bit at his upper lip in aggravation.

MIMI began to emit a subtle, high-pitched beeps.

"Someone's after us," Tak said. The beeping came at more frequent intervals now.

"GIR, what do you see?" Zim asked.

"I see a building, and another building, and a fish-looking guy, and another building, and a puppy, HI PUPPY!" he screamed, waving frantically even though his arm was facing forward instead of backward.

"Shut that thing up and get over here," Tak hissed, grabbing ahold of Zim's cloak and dragging him into another alley. This one was only a few feet deep, with a tall metal fence blocking their way forward—the only way out was the way they came in, unless they managed to climb over.

"You couldn't have chosen a _better_ alley?" Zim asked.

Tak ignored him and whipped out a laser gun—Pog's old gun—from beneath her cloak, aiming it at the mouth of the alley.

"Hey, you said you weren't bringing that!" Zim exclaimed.

"Only so you'd shut up about wanting to carry it," she said, cocking it. MIMI's sensors kept beeping away, getting faster and faster until finally a shape appeared in the entrance.

"Identify yourself," Tak ordered.

"I'll need you to identify _yourselves_ first," said the shape, a male. He had a weapon pointed their way as well.

Zim's antennae perked up; he knew that voice. "Skoodge?" he asked.

The weapon lowered slightly. "Maybe…why do you ask?"

Zim stepped forward. "It's me, Skoodge! Zim!"

Now Skoodge lowered the weapon completely and stepped forward, the flickering yellow streetlamp overhead illuminating his features—he was as wide and grease-stained as ever, although his Invader's uniform had been switched out for a navy blue jumpsuit. "Zim? That's not possible. You're too tall. And last I heard, you're also dead."

"I'll prove it," Zim said. "Remember when we were smeets and I convinced you to go to the surface of Irk with me? I made it but you blew up, I think. It definitely wasn't my fault."

Skoodge's antennae stuck up. "Wow, I _did_ blow up! It really is you!"

Zim put his hands on his hips, grinning. "You can put that thing down, Tak. He's not a threat to us."

"Actually," Skoodge said, pointing his weapon at them again. "I do still have to question why you're here. But I'll be a lot nicer about it!"

Tak looked from Skoodge to Zim to Skoodge again. With a sigh, she lowered her gun, but before she could shove it back into her cloak, Skoodge activated the weapon in his hand, which encased it in a blue force-field and pulled it forward.

Skoodge deactivated it and let the gun fall into his hand. "Sorry, I have to confiscate this until I'm done with questioning. Come with me!" As they followed him out of the alley, Tak elbowed Zim hard in the side.

Skoodge led them on a long and winding path across town until they came to what appeared to be a defunct warship hangar. He entered a few codes, gave a password to someone behind a door, and led them inside. They went into a tiny room and he had them sit down.

"Alright," he said, settling into his own chair across a table from them. "What are two Irkens like yourselves doing on Cyberflox?"

"What are _you_ doing on Cyberflox?" Tak asked, annoyed.

"I could ask you the same question."

"You just did."

"Really? Shoot! There's a very specific script I had planned in my head for this and…well, I don't mean to be rude, but you're messing it up," he said.

Tak made a disgusted sigh and let her head fall back so she could stare at the ceiling.

Zim stepped in. "Listen, Skoodge. We're kind of laying low here, so if you could just let us go and forget you saw us, that'd be great."

Skoodge shook slightly up and down as his leg bounced beneath the table. "The folks I'm with are laying low, too. That's why I've been on the lookout for any suspicious Irkens. Hate to break it to you, but you two match that description. Unless you tell me exactly what it is you're doing here, I can't let you go. And things will get a lot less…comfortable for you."

Zim drummed his fingers on the table. "Are you with the Empire?"

Skoodge crossed his arms. "Are you?"

Zim looked over at Tak, who sighed and waved a hand in a "do what you want" sort of gesture. He stood up, removed his cloak, and turned around so Skoodge could see his empty back.

Skoodge gasped. "Y-your PAK! W-where is it?"

"Gone," Zim said, sitting back down. "Tak is the same. As you can see, we're clearly not aligned with the Empire any longer. But we won't tell you anything else until we know your allegiances."

Now Skoodge was shaking for a different reason. He swallowed. "I-I'm not with the Empire either, b-but—what's going on? How are you _alive?"_

"Because the Tallest lied to us," Tak said. "What we've been told all our lives about PAKs being necessary for survival was fake. The body _does_ have to undergo an adjustment period after manual PAK removal, but it's completely unnecessary to have one. Convenient, yes. But unnecessary."

"Defectiveness is also a lie," Zim added. "From extensively studying three PAKs, we've discovered no differences between a defective and non-defective model. They all had the same schematics and functions."

Skoodge looked from Tak to Zim. "Where'd the third PAK come from?"

Zim glanced over at Tak. "Long story."

Skoodge leaned over the table, holding his head in his hands. "Oh, man, this is _not_ what I was expecting to hear when I started following you guys."

"Incredible, yes," Zim said. "And if you're undercover like you claim to be, you should seriously consider removing yours."

Skoodge perked up again. "Like, right now? I can just do it whenever?"

"Well…" Zim said. "You'd be unconscious anywhere from 2-6 months. If you have that kind of time, do it."

"Holy smokes," Skoodge said. "I don't know if the boss would like that."

"Who's _the boss?"_ Tak asked.

"That would be me," came a voice from an intercom speaker. Spinning around in his seat, Zim noticed the wall behind them was glass—a two-way mirror, most likely. Sure enough, the lighting shifted on the other side to reveal a Vortian and a massive, muscular alien who was likely a Gluteomaxian.

"And what makes _you_ so special?" Tak demanded.

"I am Lard Nar, captain of the Resisty," the Vortian said.

"The _Resisty?"_ Tak asked. Zim snorted.

Lard Nar clenched his fists. "I am so _sick_ of Irkens making fun of our name! It's a perfectly good, descriptive name!"

"And memorable," the large alien next to him said.

_"And_ memorable!" he shouted. He took a deep breath to steady himself. "Anyway, it seems you two have uncovered an interesting secret about the Irken race. We could use that. We could use _you."_

"No thanks," Tak said. "We've got a more important mission to focus on."

"Hold on," Zim said. "Just what _is_ the Resisty? And what would you have to offer us in return for our knowledge?"

Lard Nar tented his fingers, grinning. "We're the largest collective resistance against the Irken Empire in the galaxy. We've taken on the _Massive_ and survived. And now we're plotting our next major attack on Irk. I hope that's something you're interested in, because now that you know of our location and plans, you have two options: join us or die."

Zim could feel Tak's icy glare on him but ignored her; the wheels in his brain were turning. The Resisty could be just what he and Tak needed to enact their revenge on the Tallest. If he could find a way to gain control of the organization, their plans would go even smoother.

He smiled at the captain. "That _does_ align with our objectives, yes. We would be happy to join your…Resisty."

Lard Nar grinned back. "Good. I think the two of you will make the most valuable additions to our army yet."

Zim just kept on smiling.


	9. Chapter 8

At first, Tak was none too pleased with Zim's decision to join the Resisty, but she warmed up to it when he explained his plan to take over the organization. He just needed to do some undercover work, kill the captain, and then inform the Resisty that Lard Nar had chosen Zim to be his successor as captain and commander.

"Why do you get to be the leader?" Tak asked as they gathered their things to move into the Resisty's base.

"Because I came up with the plan?" Zim said, confused.

"But this is _our_ mission," she said. "Every time you talk about it, it's always 'the Empire lied to _us,'_ '_we_ shouldn't be seen as defectives anymore.' If you want to take control, then I'm going to be captain, too."

"There can't be two captains, that's not how commanding a ship works."

"There are two Tallests, aren't there? Make it work. Or else I might have to let word of your little coup slip out."

Tak's cunning made Zim loathe his past self for choosing to work with her. At the same time, he didn't think there was another Irken alive whose ambitions could match, and even best, his own.

Besides, they were going to have to watch each other's backs now that they were in the Resisty's territory. The members of the organization were less than thrilled to have two more Irkens in their crew. When he and Tak returned to the Resisty's hangar, they were immediately greeted by the Gluteomaxian, named Thork, a Meekrob who'd taken on the form of a hooded specter, and a gaggle of Screwheads.

"We're laying down a few ground rules for you two, same as we gave your fat friend," Thork said. "First, obey your orders. Second, no suspicious fraternizing. You Irkens are the worst about scheming behind people's backs."

"What makes you think we'd do that?" Tak asked, straightening up boldly even though she was still only half his height and a third of his girth. "We hate the Empire just as much as you do."

"Sure, but you hate being treated like your size even more," Thork said, patting her roughly on the head. "And an Irken who feels powerless is the most dangerous Irken of all."

"Well, have you considered _not_ treating us like dooky?" Zim asked.

Their welcome party burst into laughter until one of the Screwheads stepped forward.

"You mean _I_ should treat you nice after you enslaved my people and forced us to send your mail for the past eight hundred years?" he asked.

"And ravaged my planet?" said Thork.

"And betrayed every alliance you ever made, including those with the Meekrob and the Vortians?" the Meekrob said.

After a pause, Zim said, "Yes, that would be preferable."

The mood shifted and suddenly a mob of angry aliens was stalking toward them, teeth bared and eyes shining with eagerness at finally being able to beat a couple of Irkens into green sludge. But before they could start throwing punches, Skoodge ran huffing and puffing over to stand between them and Zim and Tak.

"Easy, easy!" Skoodge panted. "Remember, the boss wants to get as much information out of these two as he can. That means they sort of have to be alive."

"Only sort of?" Thork said, cracking knuckles that were larger than Zim's entire fist.

"Listen, I know they probably said some stupid stuff, but they didn't have the easiest time in the Empire," Skoodge said. "I don't know much about Tak, but she was never assigned to be an Invader. And Zim here was a food service drone on Foodcourtia before he became one. Of course, his mission was—,"

"I'll have you know that I was an Elite soldier and a military scientist before I became an Invader," Zim said, cutting him off before he could mention the part about his mission being a fake. "My stint on Foodcourtia was so short it's really not worth mentioning."

"So short it's not worth mentioning," laughed a Screwhead. "Kind of like you, huh shorty?"

With a snarl, Zim leaped forward, claws flying. Skoodge caught ahold of him before he could tear anyone's eyes from their sockets.

"LET ME GO," Zim yelled, thrashing in Skoodge's arms.

"Don't make me pull your antennae," Skoodge threatened. "I really, really don't want to do that!"

Zim kept struggling, but finally stopped when Skoodge took both of his antennae in a fist—not pulling, not even clamping down that hard, but making a point. After a few more motionless moments, he let Zim go. Tak immediately (and roughly) grabbed Zim by the upper arm and yanked him back to her side. She didn't let go, her claws nipping at his skin through her glove and his sleeve.

Skoodge sighed. "Alright. Can we just finish their initiation routine in peace now?"

Thork's fanged grin grew wider. "Sure thing. Follow me, you two."

"Don't worry, I'll be keeping tabs on you the whole time," Skoodge said quietly to Zim and Tak as they passed him. The two of them exchanged a look of dread as they followed after Thork.

"Strip," Thork said when they reached a doorway with dingy plastic flaps that blocked their view of the inside.

"Why on Irk would we do that?" Tak asked.

"All new recruits have to go through sanitation," Thork explained. "And you two really need it."

Zim and Tak looked down at themselves simultaneously. It was true: from their time on Dirt, their uniforms were discolored and ratty, and riddled with poorly mended tears and holes from fighting practice. Zim felt ashamed that he'd let his uniform, the one remaining marker of his Elite status, become so tattered and unkempt.

"Well, come on! Chop chop!" Thork said.

Tak made a noise somewhere between disgust and disappointment and tugged her tunic off. Zim gritted his teeth and did the same, purposely taking too long by neatly folding his leggings and tunic next to his boots, his gloves laid perfectly parallel on top of the stack.

Thork laughed at them. "Man, I guess the rumors are true about Irkens phasing out their mating parts. You two come from a majorly screwed up society."

A memory flashed before Zim's eyes: a lesson sometime in the middle portion of his Earth schooling that covered the differences of male and female human anatomy. Now he looked over at Tak and down at himself. They were the same, smooth and featureless as the day they were spilled onto the floor from their gestation tubes as smeets. It seemed silly to him that a civilization would want to rely on the gamble of natural reproduction when you could create nearly perfect copies of the same being by way of a few algorithms. But, like so much else he'd discovered about his Empire's teachings, perhaps that opinion was wrong, too.

He snapped back into focus when Tak, with her head held high, marched haughtily through the flaps into the room beyond. Zim stuck his tongue out at Thork and followed in similar fashion. Thork made a strange sound when he walked past, and it took him a moment to realize that it wasn't because he'd made a face, but because the other alien had seen his PAK burn, black and gruesome between his shoulder blades.

In the room beyond the flaps he was assaulted by a fire hose, gushing a substance that was at once water and foam. The Meekrob was manning it, laughing as she relentlessly sprayed him and Tak. Just when Zim thought his skin would peel off, the ground beneath them began to move. They were standing on a conveyor belt, and it ushered them through another set of flaps to a room where sparkling, stinging pink particles gusted around them and settled on their skin. It was infuriatingly itchy. On to the next room and they were once again sprayed by the Meekrob, but this substance was bitterly cold. This was countered by the next room, where they were hit by jets of air so hot it practically boiled the fluid off of their skin. Finally, the conveyor pushed them through one last set of flaps and stopped so abruptly that they toppled to the floor. As they fought to get off of each other, two wadded-up navy blue jumpsuits were tossed on top of them.

"Uniforms," Thork said.

"You didn't have to throw them," Skoodge said. Then, to Zim and Tak, "that wasn't so bad, right?"

Having finally separated from one another, Zim and Tak glared at their compatriot.

Zim picked up one of the jumpsuits. "Can't we just have our regular clothes back?"

"Nope," Thork said. "They went straight to the incinerator. Nothin' but ash now."

"So…they're gone."

"Well, except for your boots. We can't afford to outfit all our recruits with shoes on top of uniforms. You're lucky two guys just got their heads vaporized by a cannon malfunction back in the weapons lab," Thork said.

Zim stared down at the blue fabric. His Invader's uniform was the only thing he'd worn for most of his life, from his first battles as a soldier to Foodcourtia to Earth, and everywhere on it. All that time, up in smoke. Except for his boots. He could find comfort in those, at least.

He and Tak finished pulling on their ill-fitting uniforms in silence.

"Now that you're squeaky clean, it's time for duties," Thork said.

"Why wouldn't we do that _before_ we got sterilized?" Zim asked.

"He means job assignments, moron," Tak sighed, itching at her chest through the burlap-like material of her jumpsuit. Behind Thork, Skoodge put a hand to his mouth, stifling laughter.

"You said you worked on Foodcourtia right?" Thork asked Zim. "You'll be in the kitchen preparing meals for the crew."

Zim's antennae flattened against his skull. "No! I've seen enough grease traps to last me until the heat death of the universe! Anything but that!"

Thork just smiled. "Don't like it? Good. It's perfect for you," he looked at Tak. "And what was your job, little lady?"

"Janitorial drone," Tak muttered, looking at her feet.

"Great! We got a guy named Florgy with SIBS, so we need somebody to clean up his messes."

"What's SIBS?"

"Spontaneous Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Guy can practically shit on command. Except he can't, because then it wouldn't be spontaneous. But it _does_ happen with disturbing frequency."

"Very disturbing," Skoodge added.

Tak gave Zim a glare so venomous he was surprised he didn't die on the spot. "I hope get your head shoved in a garbage disposal."

In that moment, Zim sort of hoped it would, too.


	10. Chapter 9

Zim and Tak had only just finished getting settled when Lard Nar summoned them to the medical bay for evaluations. He didn't give any further details, which put Tak on edge, but Zim figured it would just be a physical exam to ensure they weren't bringing any unsavory space diseases with them.

The medical bay could only be described as ominous. It was one long narrow hallway with rooms on either side, some with windows to allow passerby to look inside, others marked only by heavy metal doors. There was also a door all the way at the end; Zim could see bluish light flickering along the floor from inside. The corridor was lit periodically with queasy yellow overhead lights and was quiet aside from the mechanical hum of medical equipment.

The captain stepped out of one of the rooms and gestured for them to come in. Ixane, the disguised Meekrob, gave Tak a shove on the shoulder to coax her forward, but she stopped Zim when he tried to follow.

"You're coming with me to the room at the end," Ixane said to Zim.

"And why is that?" Zim asked, planting his hands on his hips.

"Just follow me," she said, floating ahead of him. Zim watched her for a moment, then looked inside the room at Tak and Lard Nar. The captain was giving him a warning look.

"Please don't be difficult," Lard Nar said. "It wouldn't be a very good first impression to leave your captain with."

"I don't want to be separated," Zim said, more to Tak than the captain. "We weren't separated for sanitation, so why now?"

"Just go, Zim," Tak said. "It'll be good to have a break from you for a bit."

"But—,"

_"Go_, Zim," Tak repeated, through gritted teeth this time. There was a warning in her tone: _if you mess this up for us already, I'll kill you. _He turned his attention to the captain, brows drawing together as they locked eyes. Then he stuck out his lip in an angry pout and, finally, followed Ixane to the very end of the hallway.

Ixane opened the door to reveal a room full of strange equipment. Everything was metal: a metal gurney bed, a metal chair with cuffs for the wrists and ankles, a metal tank with a glass porthole for observing the bubbling liquid inside and whatever might get suspended in it, and above it all, tubes that connected to blindingly bright, giant monitor screens.

"Don't mind all that. We had to get what we could pay for, and resisting a nearly all-encompassing empire doesn't exactly line one's pockets," she said. "Step inside."

Zim entered the room, trying to keep his antennae in a confident raised position to hide his fear. He'd seen interrogation chambers before, and he'd assisted in many a dissection during his days as a scientist—this room felt like a nightmarish intersection where both could occur. Ixane gestured for him to sit on the gurney. A Quasicrystalline woman who looked similar to the one from his team on Hobo 13 stepped forward, her armored body blue and shining.

"This is the one the captain mentioned?" she asked, looking him up and down.

"Yes, the PAK-less male," Ixane said.

The blue alien made a hum of curiosity. "This is certainly the most interesting specimen I've had in some time. It's a welcome break from dealing with Florgy's problems, anyway."

"Tell me about it," Ixane said.

"Quit talking like I'm not sitting right here!" Zim barked. "Hurry up and do your tests so I can get back to _not_ being in this creepy room."

The blue alien narrowed her eyes at him. "Right, then. I'm Lattice, head of medical operations and experimentation. Today I'll be performing a few tests on you for comparison with your compatriot, Skoodge. It will be interesting to note the differences between an Irken with a PAK vs. one without."

"You're using the word 'interesting' an awful lot," he said, clutching the edge of the gurney.

She smiled. "I'm a medic. I always find these sorts of tests interesting. Now then," she brought up a small flashlight and clicked the end, turning it on. "Open your mouth."

Lattice proceeded to circle around him, performing all manner of tests on his motor functions and physical qualities. Meanwhile, Ixane took everything down on a tablet, the sensor pen emitting a high-pitched buzz as she wrote. Zim scowled whenever fingers went into his mouth or light was shone in his eyes, and he couldn't keep a low hiss from escaping his throat when Lattice tried to grab his antennae.

"Yes, I know they're terribly sensitive," Lattice said. "But be a big boy and sit still."

Ixane snorted. "Nothing big about him. Don't even have to weigh him to know he's underweight. Not to mention his—,"

Zim jabbed a warning claw in her direction. "Make a comment about my height and I'll disassemble that despicable form atom by atom."

In spite of the darkness of her hood, Zim knew she was smirking. "I'm not the one who's gonna be disassembled, _big boy."_

"Ixane!" Lattice barked. She softened her tone when she spoke to him. "Don't pay attention to that. Now, please, hold still."

Zim tried to make sense of Ixane's words, but he could barely think with Lattice's cold, glassy fingers running up his antennae and clicking together at various distances to measure their responsiveness. Then she asked him to pull down the top half of his jumpsuit in order to get an accurate read on his breathing. She gasped and he knew she was looking at his burn.

"Is this a result of PAK removal?" she asked.

"No, I sustained this injury at my Existence Evaluation. I'm sure you've heard of that fine Irken tradition," he replied. He felt something like a frigid finger tracing up his spine and sat bolt upright.

"Will you tell me a bit more about this evaluation? Why it resulted in this strange injury?" she asked.

He swallowed. "The Control Brains malfunctioned when they tried to strip out my data."

"So, you failed the evaluation then. You were being…what do you call it? Deleted?"

Zim recalled the rush of data from the Control Brains invading his mind, his body thrashing midair, the terrible burning, the smell of his own skin cooking. "Yes," he said.

"And why did the Control Brains malfunction upon your failure?"

"I'm not seeing how this is relevant to my examination," he growled.

"Trust me, it is."

Zim suddenly felt something cold and hard probing into the empty PAK ports on his back, a sensation far worse than having his antennae touched. He sprang off of the gurney, ready to do some shouting, but Ixane was quickly upon him. The moment his feet touched the ground, she pushed him into the metal chair with the wrist and ankle cuffs, which promptly clamped shut, trapping him.

"What is this? Release Zim this instant!" he shouted, struggling against his restraints.

"Shame, you were really being quite good," Lattice said, standing before him. "Oh well, this is the part I was excited for anyway."

"This is your last chance! Release me now!" he bellowed, louder this time. Then, as Ixane approached with a black, rubbery mask, he yelled, "GIR! HELP YOUR MASTER! GIR! TAK! TAK, WHERE ARE YOU? HELP ME!"

"Sweet dreams!" Ixane laughed, pressing the mask to his face.

Zim woke up with a start inside a room full of yellowish light. His fingers spread out on starchy sheets and he realized he was in an open medical pod.

"Hi!" came GIR's cheerful voice from beside him.

"GIR!" Zim said. The robot was sitting on a spinning stool next to his bed, rotating in slow circles. "W-where am I? What happened?"

"You're in a room!" GIR said. "They told me you got kinda sleepy so they put you in here and I came back because I missed you and I said 'hey, where's my Master' and they said he's in a room because he got kinda sleepy so I came in here and now you're not sleepy anymore!"

Zim felt dizzy. He put a hand on his head. "Who's 'they,' GIR?"

"Some people I talked to who said you were in a room because you were—,"

"Yes, yes I _understand_ that!" Zim said. "But who—,"

"You're awake," Tak said. She was in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe.

"Tak!" he said, sitting up straighter. "I need you to tell me what's going on. Why am I in this room?"

She didn't come in. "You apparently had a weird reaction to a vaccine they administered. What's the last thing you remember?"

"I…I remember…" Zim said, trying to assemble his thoughts. "I remember walking down the hallway after that Meekrob lady."

"Is that all?"

"No, I was…sitting. On a table? A gurney! It was…cold. Everything was cold."

"Great. Anything else?"

Try as he might, he couldn't conjure memories beyond the cold of the metal gurney seeping through his jumpsuit. He sat silently, staring down at his hands as they clutched at the sheets.

"Okay, well in that case—," Tak started.

"Wait, so nothing happened to you?" he asked.

She gave him a level stare. "No."

"You…were with the captain. What happened? Did he ask about us?"

"He asked me some questions," she said. "And then that crystal woman came in and performed my evaluation. That's all."

Zim sank back into the pod bed, still trying to piece together the lost time.

"GIR will keep an eye on you until you feel well enough to leave," Tak said. "I have to go."

"Where?" he asked.

"I'm a janitor, remember? I've got a job to do," she said bitterly. With that, she pushed off from the doorframe and left him alone.

Once she was gone, Zim turned to GIR. "Are you sure you don't know anything else?"

The little robot was staring at the monitor next to his bed, mouth slightly ajar as though he were watching television. "What?" he asked.

Zim sighed and closed his eyes. He could play sick a little bit longer if it meant getting out of kitchen duty. He scratched absentmindedly at his wrist, then realized it felt terribly sore. When he pushed up the sleeve of his jumpsuit, he saw deep green and purple bruises, along with a raw pink splotch atop his wrist joint, the culprit of the itching. He pushed up his other sleeve and saw similar marks.

With a gasp, he tossed away the sheets and pulled up the legs of his suit. There was some bruising around his ankles, though not as bad as his wrists. For some reason the word "disassembled" was at the forefront of his mind. Breathing heavily, he unzipped the front of his suit and looked down at his torso, expecting to see a long, garish scar from a dissection he somehow survived. But he saw nothing but skin and bones.

He lay back again, catching his breath. Something wasn't right, but he had no idea what, or why. Tak had been short with him, which at first he attributed to her being angry, but now he wondered if she knew more than she was letting on. If he hadn't doubted his decision to join the Resisty when they got assigned their horrible jobs, he was certainly doubting it now. But he wasn't going to stop until he completed his mission to take over the organization and get revenge on the Empire—he was through giving up. No, he would just have to stay vigilant and, above all else, trust no one.

Same as ever.

* * *

**Author Note: OOOOO guys I've been so excited to post this chapter. Things have been happening up until now, but this is when the real meat of the story gets started. I also wanted to say thanks for the reviews and for following/favoriting and all that jazz! Keep letting me know your thoughts as this goes on; I love hearing what you have to say! It fills me with writerly determination. **


	11. Chapter 10

Working in a kitchen was as horrible as Zim remembered it being. Every surface was slick and sizzling with grease, and because he was the new guy and an Irken he got stuck with the most unsavory chores: cleaning grease traps, diving through garbage for lost utensils, and scraping various forms of goo and crust from the machines and cookware. More than once, he was tripped while carrying an army pot full of simmering sauce. At the very least, he supposed, he didn't have to interact with irate customers at a register. Or dance for them in a suit full of boiling grease.

Tak, meanwhile, was tasked with cleaning up the messes made by the Resisty's crew, which could range anywhere from sweeping up dust to handling radioactive waste from weapons testing that happened deep within the hangar. The Resisty was building a new battleship in their commandeered hangar, so it needed to have the most secret, deadly weapons of any in the galaxy. Zim could always tell when Tak had been dealing with radiation during her janitorial shift—rather than eating or tinkering with her PAK, she would opt instead to sleep off the nausea and vertigo of exposure in the cockpit of her ship.

GIR was the one thing that really brought Zim, and even Tak, some joy. Since Zim was in the kitchen for most of the day, the little robot was free to annoy the Resisty's crew any way he pleased. This might involve stealing someone's drill because he liked the sound it made, or screaming about how much he missed Earth pigs to whoever accidentally walked too close, or jumping onto tables at mealtime to kick food into everyone's faces while he sang and danced. MIMI had even started misbehaving with him, since she had nothing else to do.

But even the funniest delinquencies wouldn't thaw the cold shoulder Tak had been turning on Zim since they started their jobs with the Resisty. She only interacted with him when she absolutely had to. He knew she was angry at him for deciding to join the Resisty on a whim and landing them in positions they despised. While he definitely wasn't going to apologize, he needed to worm his way back to speaking terms with her to find out what she and the captain had talked about on their first day. He still had only a vague idea of what happened after he went into the far room with Ixane and Lattice. But something told him Tak knew more about it than she let on.

When he could, Zim liked to sneak out of the kitchen and climb isolated sections of scaffolding surrounding the Resisty's massive new flagship, which was housed deeper within the hangar, just before the medical bay. It was peaceful, being high above the rest of the crew. And, more importantly, he could be alone there.

Or, so he thought. As he climbed, he caught movement in his periphery and spied Tak sitting a few levels above him. Apparently, she liked to use this spot to get away from her duties, too. He started climbing again, but she got up and started to leave.

"Oh, come on!" Zim called out. "Tak, wait!"

She didn't, and they wound up having an unintentional obstacle course training session, leaping, climbing and tightrope walking through multiple levels of scaffolding until she finally hit a dead end and he cornered her. She turned on him, teeth bared in a snarl, but before she could start swinging claws, he produced a ration bar from the pocket of his jumpsuit. It was quiet as she eyed it warily, but he knew she wouldn't turn it down—she'd skipped dinner last night because of her nausea. Finally, with a sigh, she took it from him and sat down, feet hanging over the edge. He pulled out his own bar, sad that he now only had half a lunch, and took up a similar position.

Tak was nearly finished with her bar and still hadn't spoken. Zim knew he had to act fast if he wanted to successfully get back on speaking terms with her.

"Hey, wanna see a game I came up with?" he asked.

She glared at him, chomping at her snack.

"Check it out," he went on. Far below them, the rest of the Resisty milled about like little bugs as they went from one task to the next. He closed one of his eyes, reached out a hand, and pretended to squash them between his fingers. He grinned widely at her.

"I don't get it," she said dryly.

"You're not at the right angle," he said. Cautiously, he scooted closer so that when he reached out his right arm it would look like she was reaching out her left. "Now close one of your eyes. And maybe tilt your head a little."

She groaned but followed his instructions. Then he pinched his fingers at the people below them, making fart sounds with his tongue whenever he "squished" one. He pulled away, staring eagerly at her. Finally, she copied him, pinching her own fingers.

"Make the sounds, too," he said. "It's funnier." He went back to squishing, pootering every time someone disappeared.

Reluctantly, she stuck out her tongue and made a quiet puttering sound. Her face went rigid and Zim knew she was trying not to give him the satisfaction of laughing. But finally, when they started doing it at the same time, she let a few snickers escape. Then Zim made a particularly wet fart sound and starting giggling and they became an echo chamber of laughter until he was kicking his legs with his head thrown back and nearly tumbled off the scaffolding. This, of course, caused Tak to laugh harder.

Once they recovered, it was quiet between them again. Both of their ration bars were gone.

"So…" Zim began. "How long do you think it'll be before Skoodge wakes up?" The captain had accepted Skoodge's request to remove his PAK, so their fellow Irken was now in the long coma that came with readjustment.

"Don't know," Tak said.

"I wonder what sorts of…_tests_ they'll run on him when he wakes up."

"You're trying to ask about our medical evaluations, aren't you?"

Zim's antennae shot up, giving him away before he could even come up with a lie. He sighed. "I just want to know why I can't remember what happened. Nothing slips through the ironclad mind of Zim!"

"Debatable," she said. "But I don't know what happened. I wasn't there, genius."

"Okay, well what happened in yours then?" he asked.

"They just did a physical. You know, checking my eyes and the responsiveness of my antennae, that sort of thing."

"Did they do anything else? Did they look at your back?"

"Yes, they examined my PAK ports. It wasn't a big deal."

"See, that's where I stop remembering. It's _all_ fuzzy, but nothing comes to me after they looked at my back."

"Well, they probably gave you that vaccine right after that, the one you had a reaction to. You're putting too much thought into this."

"No, I'm not!" Zim shouted. "That day, in my room, I saw wounds on my wrists and ankles. I didn't have them before I went into that creepy room at the end of the hall. How do you explain that?"

Tak made an exhausted sigh. "You're asking me for answers I don't have."

"Fine, maybe you don't know," he said. "So how about this: what did the captain say to you while I was getting tested?"

"Oh, will you give it a _rest_ already?"

"No! I won't! If we're gonna take this guy down, you need to tell me what you learned about _him_, and what he learned about _us_. Surely you picked up on some sort of weakness while you were in there. Or has your training forsaken you?"

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. Zim knew he was toeing the line, but if there was any way to get Tak to spill information, it was to insult her competence as a soldier. That, or he'd get pushed over the edge and pop like a meaty water balloon all over the floor. Then he wouldn't have a weird medical mystery to worry about. Either way, the results would be in his favor.

"He asked me about the Empire," Tak said. "And he asked me how we discovered the ability to live without PAKs. Basic background information. Then Lattice and Ixane performed my exam and they told me you were knocked out. And I'll have you know that, since we're PAK-less and apart from the Empire, Lard Nar doesn't view us as a threat. He thinks we're weaker. Easier to control. That's why he doesn't mind me being around their big weapons all day cleaning up their messes. But guess what? I know where all the guns are now. I know when people are watching the door and when they're not. And I know that the security lock on the door is broken so they just pretend to punch in a code and whistle to make the button sounds. How's that for reconnaissance, _Zim?_ Good enough for you? Or do you want to compare notes with the _stimulating_ gossip I'm sure you've picked up in the kitchen?"

Zim crossed his arms. "I'll have you know that the captain receives meals in his quarters as opposed to the mess hall with the rest of the crew."

"Oh? And where are his quarters located?"

"GIR is going to tell me as soon as he successfully doesn't get distracted while following the delivery cook back there. And remembers to tell me afterward. And tells me accurate details."

She laughed smugly and stood up. "Good to know we'll have the answer sometime this millennium."

"Where are you going?"

"Break time's over. You'd better get back too, unless you want your face shoved in Thork's armpit for being tardy," she began to descend a ladder, then stopped. "Actually, stay up here a bit longer. Seeing that would really make my day."

"Oh, go eat Florgy shit!" Zim yelled.

Tak just laughed, deftly descending the ladder and negotiating her way down the scaffolding to the ground. He'd lost this one, and he hadn't gotten much closer to solving the puzzle of his exam, but at least she was talking again. Even though he was still uncertain of how much to trust her, he found it comforting; like listening to music with someone on a bumpy, arduous drive.


	12. Chapter 11

Just like in their original warehouse, Zim and Tak constructed a workspace area near the ship to continue tinkering with their PAKs. They would've slept in the barracks with the rest of the crew, but finding unidentifiable goo in their bunks every other night was enough to drive them back to the floor of Tak's ship. If it made them even bigger outcasts than they already were, so be it; it was nothing they weren't used to.

On this night, the two of them had completed their shifts at the same time and were working on constructing a covering for the ship and their workspace, consisting of any tarps and spare lightbulbs they could get their hands on.

"Okay, GIR," Zim said, preparing to shinny up a pillar to tie off one of the tarps. "Watch carefully and catch me if I start to fall. This is _very_ important since I don't have my PAK to help me balance or heal anymore."

"Why don't you just have GIR climb up there for you?" Tak asked, sitting on a crate and flicking a lightbulb until it glowed to life.

"Because there's a particular angle I'm going for and it would take too long to explain," Zim said.

"I highly doubt it's that complicated."

"Well, you're not the one who's had to work with his attention span for the past decade."

Tak made an exhausted "do what you want" kind of sound and Zim rubbed his hands together, eyeing up the pillar. He leaped and wrapped his arms and legs around it as best he could—it was wide, so keeping his grip while climbing was difficult. His back throbbed, aching with commands that would make his job easy and safe. But only his organic limbs could help him now.

He stopped for a moment, sweating, and cranked his head over his shoulder. Progress had been slow; he wasn't as high as he thought he was. But high enough, he supposed. He carefully knocked the wire he would use to tie the tarp off of his shoulder and passed it from one hand to the next.

Then he started to slip. He scrambled to get his grip back, but the sweat that had formed on his bare hands was too slippery. Curse the Resisty for burning his gloves.

"GIR, CATCH ME!" he yelled, falling through open air.

Zim's eyes peeled open, sticky with sleep. The ground was cool and smooth. He was on the floor of Tak's ship. He sat up and put a hand on his head. If he was just waking up, why was he so dizzy?

He exited the cockpit and nearly fell over. Tarps and lights were strung above him like a ceiling of golden stars. His eyes fell on the pillar and followed it up to where one of the tarps was tied off; not quite the right angle, but close. Had he done that?

"You're finally up," Tak said, standing up from her stool at the makeshift workstation. "Hurry and get to the kitchen or you'll be late to your breakfast shift."

Zim tried to focus on her, still groggy. He wetted his lips; they tasted salty, and with his tongue out he caught a briny scent, like one of Earth's blue seas. "Breakfast?"

"Still out of it," she observed. "If you don't recall, you fell yesterday night trying to hang that tarp. GIR didn't catch you in time and you were out cold. Slept the rest of the night."

He looked at the jury-rigged tent above them again, then back down at Tak. "You did _all this_ in one night?"

She glanced off to the side. "MIMI helped. You obviously weren't going to."

Zim put a hand to his head, slumping back against the ship. "I…I feel strange."

"Maybe you hit your head harder than I thought. You could go back to the medical bay and—,"

"No. No, I don't want to go back there," he said, his guts heaving at the thought of the long, narrow hallway—how it pointed like an arrow toward the heavy door at the end.

"Then quit being dramatic and get to work," she said. Then she picked up her mop and bucket and strode off to wherever her duties called her.

Zim stayed still for a few moments, taking deep breaths to center himself. Then he too left their camp and headed to the kitchen, the last place he wanted to be while his squeedlyspooch was in knots.

"Get a little extra beauty rest this morning?" asked Veedo, a Screwhead, when Zim trudged into the kitchen. "Oh, you better not be tired! I'll give you something to be tired about!"

Zim just grimaced as he slipped his apron on and tied it around his waist, folding the front upward so it wouldn't drag on the floor and trip him. There were plenty of eager legs waiting to do that for him.

"You're on vorgaschlop this morning, Zim," Veedo said, beating a nondescript hunk of meat with a tenderizer.

Zim's antennae pricked up. "Vorgaschlop? But it's second day."

A spindly alien named Spleenk poked his head around a hissing freezer vat. "Get your head on straight, Zim! It's fifth day."

Zim looked down at his hands as he tried to parse out his situation. The kitchen was on a five-day cycle, each day with its own predetermined meals and maintenance tasks. Yesterday had been first day, so he'd mostly been bolting back and forth from freezer to prep station to get everyone their needed supplies. Today he should've been on fry duty, dunking wriggling food matter into boiling grease and trying to avoid the stinging splatter. But he'd somehow missed second, third, _and_ fourth day, even though Tak had told him he'd only slept through one night.

"Oh, Zim understands now," he said, planting his hands on his hips. "This is a very funny prank you're all pulling. How very original."

"What're you talking about?" Spleenk asked.

"Trust me, Zim, if we're pranking you, you'll know it," Veedo said, taking another whack at the meat. "Now get on the vorgaschlop before it cements itself to the pot!"

Finally, Zim went to the stovetop where the army pot of vorgaschlop was thickly bubbling. He took the stirring paddle in both hands and, grunting from the effort, began to stir the purple-brown stew in slow, heavy circles. Next to him, another pot of yellowish water began to simmer. He watched the tiny bubbles rise, the surface of the water beginning to waver. But the longer he watched, the more he felt like he was inside that water, feeling the tickle of air bubbles roll up his face from his mouth as he exhaled sluggish breaths. There was a window in front of him, looking out over a dim room where dark figures slid from one shadow to the next. A finger came up and tapped the glass.

"Hey! Did your brain meats go completely rotten? Keep stirring!" Veedo yelled. Again came the wet thud of the tenderizer.

Even as Zim returned to his task, he couldn't shake his distraction. The vorgaschlop turned out as well as it could have, but there were many burned on globs in the pot after it had all been dished out. He spent much of what remained of his shift scrubbing endlessly at them until the pot's gray gleam was restored.

He returned to the camp ready to confront Tak, but she was still working somewhere in the hangar. With a sigh, he sat down at the work table and cleared a space to work on his PAK. He pretty much knew every circuit and bolt and their functions by heart, but fiddling with it always helped focus his mind. And besides—what if he missed something? What if today was the day it all finally came together?

Instead, he discovered a missing piece: the memory drive. Groaning, he got on his hands and knees to look for it under the table. But he only came across Tak's parts and a screwdriver that GIR had been playing with. His breathing became shallower as he stood back up and pored over the parts on the table, reciting them all by name like lyrics to a song. When he finished, he did it again. He began frantically shoving pieces around and was about to tear into Tak's parts when she returned from her duties.

"Hey, don't touch my things!" she yelled, throwing down her mop and bucket as she ran inside.

"Hypocrite!" he yelled back venomously. "Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"The memory drive from my PAK! What did you do with it?"

"Don't blame your own disorganization on _me!"_

"No! NO! This _wasn't_ me, I always put everything back _exactly_ where it goes and now it's just _gone!_ Tell me where it is!"

"I don't know what happened to your stupid memory drive!"

"LIES!" Zim roared, clutching his head in his hands. "You speak nothing but lies! First you tell me I was only out for a night when I was actually unconscious for three and now you meddle with my things and blame their disappearance on me! What'll it be next, that GIR's been crowned Supreme Genius of the universe?"

Instead of yelling back, Tak's expression went stony and her eyes fell to the work table. "Look, about this morning…I told you it had only been a day so you wouldn't freak out. Case in point," she gestured to him.

He scoffed. "Since when do _you_ care about my wellbeing?"

She shrugged. "You having a meltdown would jeopardize the mission. Which means I'd have to find a different, less convenient way to bring down the Tallest."

Zim pondered her response, decided it was plausible. "Well, that still doesn't explain where my memory drive went."

"GIR probably thought it looked interesting and…I don't know, decided to play with it or eat it or something," Tak said.

He shook his head. "I don't think he'd find that drive interesting enough to mess around with," he looked her in the eye. "You're _sure_ you don't know where it is?"

"Yes, your drive is as lost to me as it is to you," she sighed.

Zim finally relented, though he still had the nagging feeling that she was lying. But he was tired, so instead of fighting or continuing work on his PAK, he simply went into the ship to rest. As he laid there, sealed away from sound and most of the outside light, he got the dizzy sensation of being suspended in fluid. In his dreams, he found himself again within the amber liquid, which darkened into a silent blue sea. Around him were sharks and myriad other beasts made of fins and scales and teeth—all of them, hungry.


	13. Chapter 12

Germs and humans had made Zim paranoid in the past. They were mission compromisers, sneaking into his base or asking too many questions. But time? Time had never been much of a burden on his mind. Not until now.

He was constantly looking for ways to keep track of time, or indicators that more time had passed than it seemed. First, he tried carving tally marks into one of the pillars outside of the camp, but Tak caught him doing it once and he had to pretend he was marking how many times GIR had disrupted his work in the kitchen by bringing him a fascinating piece of garbage. Then he thought he could scratch marks into the gray exterior shell of his PAK, but stopped when he realized he couldn't always have it on hand for reference; if time skipped while he was on kitchen duty, he'd have no way to record it. He finally saw no other choice but to cut tallies into his own skin, clawing tiny but deep marks into his upper thigh where it was unlikely anyone would see them. Whenever there was a discrepancy (real or imagined), he made an "X." It didn't necessarily make him feel calm or safe, but he felt in control. Like he had something he could trust.

But perhaps there was a person he could trust as well. The two-month mark had just passed and Skoodge was awake. Like Tak, he didn't grow. As thrilled as Zim was that his growth seemed to be a special case, he was worried that the effects of his PAK removal were different from everyone else's. He figured he'd just taken so long to wake up (over six months) because of his poor health, but a nagging worry told him it might be something else; something about him that made him different, PAK or no PAK, from every other Irken.

After he was done in the kitchen for the day, Zim went back to the medical bay to see his old comrade. But when he reached the narrow mouth of the corridor, he became rooted to the spot. The already long hallway stretched out so far he couldn't see the end, wavering like the tongue of some giant concrete beast.

"Zim?"

Reality snapped back into focus. The voice was Skoodge's; he had just exited his room, which was near the beginning of the bay. With a smile, he trotted out.

"Checking in on me? Lucky you came when you did! I'm cleared to leave," Skoodge said, clapping a hand on Zim's shoulder.

"Yes, lucky," Zim said, swallowing in an attempt to wet his throat.

Skoodge eyed him with concern. "You look pale. Want to see if Lattice is still around to take a look—,"

"No," Zim shook his head and took a step back. "No, I'm just tired."

"Right, they've got you in the kitchen. Tough stuff," Skoodge said. "Well, hey, let's get out of here! I haven't seen the outside world for two months and I could go for some real food."

"Dinner just ended," Zim said.

Skoodge looked confused. "I meant let's go grab a bite and a drink somewhere."

Zim gave Skoodge a similar look.

"Oh, don't tell me you haven't been outside the base this _whole_ time? You're _allowed_ to go out every once in a while, as long as you don't miss your duties. This isn't Irk, Zim!"

"How was I supposed to know?"

"You could've asked! Come on, you never heard anybody making plans or saw them leaving? No one ever told you?"

"No one _ever_ talks to Zim!" Zim yelled, face burning with humiliation.

A sympathetic expression came over Skoodge's features and he gently put a hand on Zim's back, right where his PAK would have been. "Well, who needs them? They don't even know where to get the best booshka buns. But guess who does?" he pointed to himself. "This guy. Let's go!"

For the first time in two months, Zim stepped outside of the hangar. Being in open air took some adjustment, but more jarring was the smell. For some reason, he'd anticipated a cool, grassy scent, perhaps with the mustiness that followed a heavy rain in summertime: Earthy smells. Instead he got metal, dust, and the nasal headache of burning oil. Still, it felt nice to have air moving against his skin. Even if that air would probably leave him feeling scummy afterward.

They didn't go too far from the hangar. Skoodge gestured for Zim to follow him into a space between two buildings, where a staircase led down to a featureless door. Skoodge pushed it open without knocking and they entered a smoky lounge with a counter where many-limbed aliens chopped at ingredients, poured drinks, and handled monies. Zim and Skoodge took seats on the stools there, and Skoodge got them two orders of booshka buns, which turned out to be doughy balls with a sweet meaty filling. Zim actually enjoyed them, but worried that later he might regret ingesting them.

"Boy, you weren't kidding about how nasty that Phantom PAK Syndrome is," Skoodge said around a bite of booshka. "Kind of makes you want to die right after you finally start living again."

"Indeed," Zim said, trying to suppress the memories of his first few PAK-less days. The melted ports on his back throbbed dully.

"I'm sure happy you two came along with that discovery, though," Skoodge said. "Even though the Resisty rescued me after I escaped Hobo 13, they were always weird about having me around because of the PAK, I guess. Now I think they'll be more okay with me."

"Doubtful," Zim said. "Tak and I haven't exactly been warmly received."

"I'm sorry about that," Skoodge said, and he actually sounded like he was. "How is Tak, by the way? I guess we should've invited her out, too."

Zim's hands tightened into fists on the counter. "It's fine."

It was quiet for a few moments, but even though Zim was staring down at the counter, he knew Skoodge was watching him.

"Are you okay?" Skoodge asked.

Now Zim needed to decide if he actually wanted to tell Skoodge what was going on. Should he let him in on the plot to overthrow the Resisty? Or should he just tell him about the concerning phenomenon of missing time and the strange dream-memories that came with it? Or should he just make something up, say he'd eaten too much and was feeling queasy? But this was Skoodge, the guy he'd known from his first days in the Academy, who had an eagerness to help that was unheard of anywhere else in the Irken race.

He took a deep breath. "I don't know who I can trust anymore, Skoodge."

"Why's that?"

"I…I keep waking up and missing time. I'll think I just slept through a night, but it's really been two, or even three. Tak always tells me I hit my head sparring or slept too long because I'm still adjusting to the shorter nights, but…it just doesn't make sense."

"Strange," Skoodge said. "But, hey, maybe living without a PAK just makes you really tired and you have to sleep more sometimes. Wouldn't surprise me! I feel pretty beat right now, and I was out for two months!"

"But I only started experiencing these anomalies once I moved into the hangar. This never happened on Dirt or in the old warehouse."

"Maybe you're working too hard."

"No, I'm not _working too hard,"_ Zim parroted angrily. "Something's happening to me and _everyone_ knows what it is except for me! I don't even know why I'm telling you this, you're probably in on it too!"

Skoodge looked around anxiously. "Okay, let's calm down, Zim."

"HOW CAN I BE CALM WHEN I FEEL LIKE I'M LOSING MY MIND?" Zim shrieked, grasping his head and pressing his forehead to the sticky countertop. It was silent, both from Skoodge and the other patrons observing his outburst. Then Skoodge ordered two of something and the planet started spinning again. Two clacks sounded and when Zim looked up, he found a glass filled with purple liquid near his head. Skoodge had already taken his own in his hand.

"What's this?" Zim asked.

"Something to help you loosen up a little," Skoodge said, taking a sip of his own. He grimaced and whistled at the taste.

Zim straightened up, scrutinizing the drink. _"This_ is what you meant by 'a bite and a drink'?"

"Of course! Try it, it's nice and strong," Skoodge said.

"But I could barely process this when I had my PAK. And _you_ shouldn't be having it either—you're fresh out of a coma."

_"__Live_ a little, Zim! All this caution and worrying isn't like you. You're a risk-taker, a rule-breaker! Act like it and have some fun!" Skoodge said, taking another large swig of his drink.

Zim thought about the past few months and realized that maybe Skoodge was right—he _did_ worry a lot. He'd become jumpy and meek. In other words, he'd become very un-Zim. So, who cared if this drink soured his squeedlyspooch? Who cared if he did a poor job in the kitchen the next morning? Who even cared if he woke up not knowing what time it was? Not Zim. Not if it meant he could feel like himself again. He roughly picked up his glass, spilling some of the drink, and tossed the rest back in two big gulps. His mouth and throat felt hot and tingly, and he coughed a few times as Skoodge laughed and patted him on the back.

"Gimme another! The great and powerful Zim demands it!" Zim said. Skoodge cheered and finished his own drink.

Humans had a variety of terms for drunkenness: wasted, hammered, shit-faced, and so on. Zim and Skoodge were all of the above as they tumbled back up the stairs and onto the streets of Cyberflox. The yellow streetlights and the rainbow of neon signs became a kaleidoscope of flashing color as they wheeled along, arms around each other's shoulders to support their wobbly steps. They heard voices calling out to them and realized other members of the Resisty had been spending their night in similar fashion: there were Veedo and Spleenk from the kitchen, plus three or five others whose names Zim couldn't remember and didn't care to.

"Oh no, he's totally zonked!" Veedo said, laughing at Zim. "You better not puke in the vorgaschlop tomorrow morning!"

"FUCK the vorgaschlop," Zim spat, having no idea whether it was the correct usage of the Earth swear.

The group burst into laughter and Veedo said, "This guy's crazy!" and they bled together as they bobbed and weaved through the streets. They went in and out of pubs and clubs where music and voices pounded at their skulls from all angles, and they caught glimpses of dancers and gamblers and shady-business-dealers packed in every grimy corner, the gleam of eyes and teeth refracting whatever artificial or bioluminescent light hung above them from low-slung ceilings. They elbowed and jested at one another because they all knew that _they_ were the baddest ones in the room in their matching navy jumpsuits, the saggy, many-pocketed symbols of their rebellion against the most dastardly conquerors of the galaxy, and even though a warning flare shot off in Zim's brain every time they cursed the Tallest, a larger flame burned beyond it—the flame of belonging to something again, of having comrades and a mission and a purpose. So, he clanked glasses with them and drank and drank and drank.

And then he woke up. He was under the yellowish light of a room in the medical bay, and just like his first day with the Resisty, he found himself in a rickety, starchy medical pod. He was groggy and nauseated.

"Hey, man," said an equally groggy-sounding voice from the bed beside his. It was Skoodge, laid up in a similar position. "How you feeling?"

Zim replied with a sludgy cough.

"Same," Skoodge said. "We really overdid it."

"Indeed, you did," said Tak. She entered the room and stood between their pods, arms crossed. GIR rushed in after her, hopping up on Zim's.

"You threw up in my head!" GIR said excitedly. The shrillness of his voice felt like a hot blade cutting Zim's brain in half.

"You two stumbled into my camp in the middle of the night completely intoxicated," Tak said. "I doubt if you even remember getting back to the hangar. Or me hauling you two ingrates here to the medical bay."

"We're so sorry, Tak," Skoodge said. "It won't happen again. We just got a little carried away."

Tak looked at Zim expectantly. "Well?"

Zim hurriedly grabbed GIR by the head and pulled him down, abdomen heaving. But nothing came out.

"You had your squeedlyspooch pumped. Seeing as you were a drug-addled water balloon when you got in," she said, turning away disdainfully.

"Aw, no more puke!" GIR whined.

"I'll leave the two of you to suffer. Thanks to your actions, the captain is punishing _me_ by making me pick up a kitchen _and_ patrol shift on top of my regular janitorial work since no one else is willing or able to replace you. Sweet dreams, you horrible, stinking, worthless worm monkeys," she growled, stomping from the room.

It was quiet for a few moments before Skoodge spoke up. "Geez, now I feel even worse. We have to make it up to her somehow."

Zim just made a grunting noise, turning his head the opposite direction on the pillow. He wondered how long they'd been asleep—a day? Two? Although at least this time it didn't seem anything strange had happened to him, aside from having his organs flushed out. As discreetly as he could, he unzipped his jumpsuit to mark yet another instance of lost time on his thigh.

But his hip and thigh were wrapped in bandages. His antennae sprang up as he frantically pushed down the tight wrappings to see what was underneath; nothing. The scars of his time tracking were gone, with only a sticky substance left in its place—a strong healing ointment, he assumed.

"What're you doing?" Skoodge asked.

Zim put his head back on his pillow, eyes closed. "Nothing," he said. But he didn't sound like himself at all.

* * *

**Author Note: Ooooo we're really getting into it now, folks. As always, thanks for reviewing! The moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie every time I read one.**


	14. Chapter 13

On Earth, there was a wrinkly, universally disdained snack called raisins. They were the gummy, shriveled remains of grapes, a kind of juicy fruit that grew on vines. That was what Zim felt like: a raisin, squashed of everything that made him worthwhile.

His paranoia had only grown since his outing with Skoodge. He now had no idea how often he was losing time, or for how long his brain went offline. Whenever he was in the camp working on his PAK for some relief, he'd find another piece missing, or another returned in its place. All the while no one acknowledged the bizarre lapses or, if he addressed them with Tak or Skoodge, they would tell him it was all in his imagination.

He found himself wandering from the hangar more and more frequently to drink the purple beverage he'd first tried with Skoodge—the nebula, it was called. Down they'd go until he could scarcely remember his own name. Sometimes he'd run into his fellow kitchen drones and they'd laugh and give him more to drink, because when he drank he became impressionable and would dance and sing and try to fight anyone who looked at them funny. Then he'd wake up in the medical bay an indeterminate amount of days later and start over again.

He didn't even stay in Tak's ship or their camp anymore, instead opting to collapse wherever he felt like it or sleep on the roof of the hangar, where on clear nights he could just make out the stars. The constellation humans called "Orion" was backwards here compared to its position on Earth, so Zim knew somewhere far past the warrior's belt the Earth, and Dib, stared back at him. He was more uncertain now than ever about when (or if) he'd make it back to the blue planet. But he decided, in one of these lonely moments, that he would return for Dib as soon as he and Tak managed to take over the Resisty. He just had to make it happen first.

He took a step toward making it happen by stealing a gun. It had been another rough night, and he'd woken up in the medical bay. Since he didn't appear to be hooked up to anything, he hopped off the bed and left. But on his way out, he remembered what Tak had said about the weapons room being unsecured and poorly guarded. Instead of wandering off to wherever seemed like a good place to sleep off the remainder of the night, he slunk through the shadows back to the weapons testing lab. Sure enough, he saw the unmarked door with the broken keypad that Tak had described, and with a single push it swung open.

Zim's antennae sprang up in amazement. The walls bristled with weapons of all shapes and sizes. On top of a chest of drawers laid smaller handguns, including Pog's old gun, which had never been returned from the time Skoodge confiscated it. He rushed inside, grabbed it, and shoved it into his jumpsuit, for once grateful for its bagginess.

But then he saw a shinier gun. It was a newer version of an old classic he'd used during his training years, a Vort Model Blasty-C. He switched out Pog's gun for the Blasty-C, grinning gleefully. He wanted to take more, but decided that could wait for another night. He left the weapons room and went to the rooftop to sleep.

A few days later (or weeks, maybe, he really didn't know), he was lounging on the roof listening to the jury-rigged stereo he'd built when Tak's head popped up over the edge. She spotted him and clambered the rest of the way onto the roof, standing over him with her arms crossed.

"Where is it?" she asked.

"Where's what?" he asked back.

"Don't play dumb with me. The captain came into my camp today asking about a missing Vort Model Blasty-C. So, where is it?"

Zim shrugged, heart thumping against the smooth, body-warmed metal of the gun inside his jumpsuit. She frowned and stepped closer, reaching for him. His antennae sprang up and he scrambled backward to keep away from her.

"Why are you running away, Zim?" she asked tauntingly.

"I'm not running, I'm…strategically avoiding!" he said.

"Yeah. You've been doing a lot of that lately."

Tak stepped one way and Zim stepped in the opposite, a satellite tower between them his only defense. Then she faked him out and before he could escape, she grabbed a fistful of his jumpsuit. He shrieked and tried to scramble away, but his pulling caused the shirt portion of his jumpsuit to unbutton. He grasped the gun before it fell out, trying to hide it.

"I knew it!" she said, suddenly releasing him. He lost his footing and toppled to the ground. "How long did you think you could hide it from me, hm? And what a _stupid_ idea! Our reputation is hanging by a thread; this could've destroyed everything!"

He propped himself up on his elbows, scowling at her. "What else am I supposed to kill the captain with? A lost spoon from the kitchen?"

"We could've figured something out if you weren't out of commission all the time!" she yelled. "I mean, what's the matter with you lately? I thought you were bad before, but now no one ever knows where you are or what you're doing and when you _do_ come around, you're so intoxicated you can barely tell your ass from your antennae!"

"I don't know, Tak," Zim said, bringing himself to his feet again. "Maybe not knowing what's real, having no sense of time, and not being able to trust anyone is starting to _mess_ with me a little!" He gave her a rough shove on the shoulders.

"Oh, you think _you're_ having a hard time? You don't know the _half_ of it!" she said, shoving him back. "All you do is make thoughtless decisions and then screw off to let _me_ deal with the consequences. I'm trying _so_ hard to keep this mission afloat, to make your stupid ideas work in our favor. But you make it so—so _impossible!"_

Tak swung a fist at him and he leaned backward, narrowly avoiding it. Before Zim could straighten up again, she took a swinging kick at his ankles, knocking him to the ground. He rolled away as she pounced at him and smacked a pile of the pebbly dust that covered the roof at her. She growled in pain as it lodged in her eyes, but still managed to spring to her feet in the same instant he did. They grabbed at each other's wrists, trying to keep the other's claws at bay as their foreheads pressed forcefully together. She attempted to knee him in the abdomen but only grazed him, and he took her weakened stance as an opportunity to tackle her to the ground.

A metallic crunch sounded from under her when her back hit the roof. Zim froze in the midst of a punch and Tak went still beneath him. At first, he thought they'd landed on his stereo, but Fleetwood Mac played on, unaware of the battle-charged atmosphere they intruded upon.

"G-get off," Tak said, eyes blown wide with fear. "GET OFF!" she screamed, shoving him away roughly when he only stared. With shaking hands, she tore open the buttoned front of her jumpsuit and reached a hand as far as she could around to her back.

"What are you—,"

"Look at my back," she said breathlessly, yanking down the shirt portion of her jumpsuit. But as soon as she pulled the shirt away, something fell out.

The device was sparking, with sharp appendages that curled in on themselves like the legs of a dead spider. Zim felt his jaw drop as he hovered over it on his hands and knees, trying to get a closer look while maintaining a safe distance. Tak, too, had turned back around to stare at the thing until the sparking settled and finally died completely.

"W-what is that?" Zim asked.

"I don't know exactly. That first day, when they separated us, the horrible medic woman attached it to me," Tak said. She turned again so Zim could see her back—there were angry marks where those spidery appendages had clenched her flesh, and the two PAK ports on her back appeared bruised and irritated. If the device was anything like a PAK, it had probably been tapped into her spinal column. And perhaps even her brain.

"She told me if I didn't do as they said, all they'd have to do is press a button and…" she trailed off. She didn't need to say anything more. With that kind of control, Lattice and the captain could've wreaked all sorts of havoc on her innards, killing or else utterly devastating her in seconds.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Zim asked, his voice sounding far away.

"I couldn't," she said. "One of my orders was to not reveal this…_thing_ to anyone."

Zim shifted his focus from the device to Tak. _"One_ of your orders?"

She let out a long, tired sigh and met his eyes. "I'll start with this: you're not crazy, Zim. You _have_ been missing time. Your things _have_ been disappearing—and reappearing. And I know the reasons why. I just haven't been able to tell you until now."

"Well, what is it?" he demanded when she paused.

She continued. "When the captain and I were alone that first day, he asked me the obvious: where we'd come from, the latest news on the Empire, how we discovered we could live without PAKs. But then he started asking questions about _you._ At first it made sense—he's Vortian, so of course he knew about the deaths of Tallests Miyuki and Spork and the fall of Operation Impending Doom 1. But he got so specific after a while that I couldn't give him answers anymore. I questioned why he was so curious. That's when Lattice came in with the Meekrob, Ixane, and they attached that device to me. They told me they wanted to run some tests on you and your PAK, and that they needed my help to get you and any parts of your PAK I could find to the medical bay as frequently as possible. The device was to ensure I did it."

Zim swallowed thickly, his gaze on the device again. "What kinds of tests?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. They wouldn't give me any details. They just told me to take you to that room at the end of the hall."

"And that's exactly what you did," he said, anger rising in his guts. "Traitor."

"What was I supposed to do?" she snapped. "I didn't know that this thing would fall off with one good blow to the back! I thought it would _kill_ me! And getting me stuck on janitor duty again didn't make me too keen on laying down my life for you!"

"You could've at least _tried_ to tell me what was going on!" he said. "I don't have a clue how long we've been with the Resisty, but it's all _wasted_ time now. We could've been making plans and taking down the captain, but instead you and everyone else convinced me that my brain was full of worms and we haven't accomplished _anything!_ And I became the resident lab rat, apparently! Can't wait to figure out how many _organs _they've stolen from me!"

"They're not stealing your organs, idiot," Tak said. "Need I remind you that communication goes both ways? If you wanted to take down the captain so bad, why'd you decide to go out and get piss-drunk every night instead of talking to me?"

"Because I couldn't trust you! I couldn't trust anyone!" he yelled. "And clearly I was right!"

"How many times do I have to tell you I didn't have a choice?" she yelled back. "But now I do, so I'm telling you the truth. Isn't that enough?"

With a hiss, Zim stood and walked a few steps away to the edge of the roof. Looking over the edge at the long plunge down didn't help the vertigo in his mind, but at least he didn't have to face Tak for a moment. His palms grew damp as he thought how easy it would be to grab her and throw her into the wide, open air. Then he and GIR could take over the Resisty on their own, just like…on Earth. Where they'd failed miserably at it. He clenched his fists, sobering.

"It's not our fault, Zim," Tak said. He could tell without looking that she'd stood up. "The Resisty caught us off guard. We thought we had the advantage coming in with our plan and we underestimated them. But they're underestimating us, too. And now they've made us angry. They've made us feel small. But that first day, what Thork said was right: feeling small makes us dangerous. So let's show them just how _dangerous_ we can be by tearing them apart from the inside out. It'll be a nice appetizer before we take down the Tallest."

Zim turned his head so he could see the shape of her in his periphery. "You really think we can work together after all this?"

"We have to," Tak said. "But…we need to get better at talking to each other."

Zim raised his antennae.

She sighed. "Fine. _I'll _get better at telling you when something goes awry. But _you_ have to be around to listen."

Finally, he walked away from the ledge. He went to the stereo, still playing, and silenced it with a tap of his boot. Hands on his hips, he looked from the stereo to the back-clamping device on the ground to the gun, which had fallen out of his jumpsuit during their fight and lay a few feet away. Then, at last, he looked up at Tak.

"Wanna go get a drink?"

* * *

**Author Note:** FINALLY got to post one of the big reveals of the story! Zim listens to Fleetwood Mac! Lol but I've been eagerly awaiting getting to post the next stages of the story where stuff starts to come together. I'm still doing a bit of editing toward the end, but overall I pretty much have this bad boy in the bag. Gimme your thoughts, if you want! You know I love and appreciate it.


	15. Chapter 14

Zim and Tak passed under the glitter of lights that flicked on in twos and threes as night fell again on Cyberflox. It had taken some coaxing for Tak to finally agree to leave the hangar, but after they'd hidden the gun and the defunct device that had been attached to her back, she finally conceded.

"But I'm not drinking until I can barely walk," she'd said.

"Okay," Zim replied.

"And I'm not carrying you back to the hangar if _you_ get so drunk you can barely walk."

"Fine."

"And I'm not paying."

"What? Why not?"

"Because this was your idea."

Zim took her to his usual spot, the one Skoodge had shown him with the tasty booshka buns. He ordered some for them and Tak's eyes glazed over when she took a bite; it had been a long time since she'd had food that wasn't a ration bar or slop from the kitchen. Then he got them both a nebula and she smiled as she took it in her hand.

"Wow, a nebula," she said, holding it up to the light to watch it sparkle. "I haven't had one of these since the Academy. If I knew _this_ was what you were drinking, maybe I would've joined you sooner."

"Skoodge was the one who showed this place to me, so thank him," Zim said.

"I don't know, you two _did_ barf all over the camp that one night and you've been a mess ever since," she said. "I don't know if you remember, but there was a time when you actually got sick on my boots while I was taking you to the medical bay."

"Well, you deserved it for taking me there so they could do their creepy experiments on me," he said, trying to hide the embarrassed flush coloring his face.

She was tracing a finger around the rim of her glass, staring at it. "Can…you remember anything they did to you?"

He was watching, too. "No. Not really. Sometimes I have strange dreams. But whenever I'm back there…I get this horrible dread. It's the worst feeling I've ever felt."

"Worse than Phantom PAK?"

"Phantom PAK goes away."

Tak was quiet, her gaze on the swirling liquid in her glass, but with the faraway haze of someone looking at the stars.

Zim swallowed. "Did it hurt?"

She came back to herself, looking up at him. "Did what hurt?"

"That thing they put on your back. Could you feel it all the time?"

Finally, she took a sip of her drink, letting it sit in her mouth for a moment before swallowing. "At first, yes. It felt like something was grabbing me hard enough to tear my skin. And I could feel whatever was going into my ports. It made me very sore and gave me headaches all the time. After a while I guess I got used to it, just like how I didn't really feel my PAK when I had it. But not knowing what it could do to me was worse than the pain. I…"

"What?" he asked softly. They'd been speaking in near whispers for some time now.

"I've never felt so out of my own control before. Not even when I had those first bouts of Phantom PAK. I felt like I was always being watched, and I never knew if one moment I'd just hit the floor dead because they decided I wasn't doing good enough or I said something I shouldn't have," she shivered and took a much larger swig of her drink.

His eyes flickered to some crumbs on the countertop. "That's…sort of the way I felt, too. I never knew when I'd black out or for how long, and I couldn't figure out why it was happening, either. I tried, but none of the ways I tracked time ever worked. I even clawed it into my skin, but they just healed the scars and ruined my progress."

"You were doing it…on yourself?"

He gave a small nod.

Tak let out a long sigh. "I…I'm sorry."

"Me too," he said.

"For what?"

"Nothing, really. Just that the universe is so determined to make us miserable."

She laughed bitterly, lifted her glass, and held it out to him. He picked up his own and they clinked the rims together before downing their nebulas whole.

Unlike with Skoodge, Zim was able to keep his footing going back up the narrow staircase with Tak. They were pleasantly afloat, wandering the busy streets and occasionally stopping to look up at the multi-layered traffic of ships passing high above them. Zim remembered something entertaining that the group from the kitchen made him do one night and asked Tak for a few monies. She grumpily handed it over and he rushed into a shop to buy a small packet of orange stones that rolled against each other like hard candy. Next, he took her to a low rooftop and, putting a finger to his lips, he dumped some of the little stones down into the street. On impact, they crackled like gunfire and shot curlicue sparks into the air, sending people shrieking and running into each other. They both burst into laughter and hurried across the roof, climbing and jumping from building to building and throwing the stones below them as they went. Zim passed the bag to Tak and she followed his example, then got daring and threw a few into open windows, resulting in angry, horrified screams from the rooms within. Finally, far from their mischief, they doubled over and gasped for air, still laughing. They were so high up now that a few layers of traffic rushed below them. When they laid down to watch the headlights knit themselves together, they felt weightless, invisible even. It was comforting, like hiding under a giant quilt of light.

"You know," Zim said. "If we just jumped onto one of those ships and chucked out the pilot, we'd be free."

"Huh?" Tak asked.

He turned his head to her. "We could run away. Then we wouldn't have to deal with the Resisty and, hey, we wouldn't even have to deal with the Tallest! We could just…I dunno, go somewhere else and never think about any of it ever again."

"That's stupid. Where would we even go?"

"Anywhere!" he said. "We could go to Earth! It's full of stinky humans, but it isn't so bad. The Empire certainly doesn't care about it and it's way on the edge of the galaxy where hardly anything happens. We could live with the Dib-human, at least until we make a new base."

"Two Irkens in one base?"

"We could do it! We've lived in that ship this long and haven't killed each other. Imagine what it would be like to have our own quarters, our own labs and observatory rooms!"

"Would you _really_ be content to live out the rest of your days there, never venturing out to see the stars again, never having a greater mission to work towards?"

"We could make something up. We'll call it, 'Operation Don't-Leave-Earth.' When we die, it's mission accomplished!"

Tak put her hands behind her head, looking back up at the traffic. "Well, you can have fun with that, Zim. But my mission is to get revenge on the Resisty and the Tallest. I'm not going anywhere."

Zim looked back up too, feeling almost mournful as he watched the orderly freedom of each ship's course. "You really want to do it that bad?"

"Yes," she said.

He sighed and stood up, brushing off dust, and extended a hand to her. "We should get back to the hangar then."

Now it was her turn to look regretful. But she took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. As they descended, whatever spell they'd been under vanished and gravity returned to their shoulders. Zim suspected the nebulas were wearing off.

The hangar was only dimly lit when they returned, with most of the crew being tucked into the barracks for the night. At the camp, Zim stopped just shy of the entrance. It had been a long time since he'd gone inside or slept there.

"Coming?" Tak asked, opening the cockpit of the ship.

"You aren't kicking me out?" he asked.

She made a sound that was half laugh, half sigh—a tired sound—and shook her head. "It's funny, but…I haven't slept as well without that depressing Earth music of yours in the background."

Zim felt his face getting hot and his antennae perking up, though he didn't know why. He passed through the tarps and climbed into the ship after her. Leafing through Dib's CD case, he selected the Patsy Cline album that always put him to sleep. As it began to play, he curled up on the floor in his usual spot and gave an involuntary sigh of relief. Their backs began to touch as their breathing synchronized. And Zim fell asleep.


	16. Chapter 15

Even though Zim understood why the blackouts were happening and Tak now had the freedom to tell him how much time he'd missed, dealing with it was still hard. He couldn't keep his mind from dwelling on the final missing piece of the situation: what were they doing to him, and why?

These questions were weighing on him when he walked out of the kitchen one night and directly into Skoodge.

"Wow, you must be pretty out of it," Skoodge laughed. "Hard day in there?"

"Every day I spend here is a hard day, Skoodge," Zim muttered, shouldering past his comrade and continuing his route to the camp.

"I bet I know what'd make you feel better," Skoodge said. "And I'm paying."

Zim stopped walking, antennae perking up. The thought of nebulas sliding down his throat and leaving him in a haze of pleasant numbness made him swallow involuntarily. He'd been trying to limit how often he went out and how much he drank when he did, since coming back blacked-out was a surefire way to wind up in the medical bay; he wanted to make Lattice's chances to prod at him as infrequent as possible.

"Come on, we haven't had a chance to go out together in a while," Skoodge said. "I promise, we won't drink ourselves sick. We'll be nice and responsible."

Zim spared one last look in the direction of his and Tak's camp, then headed back to Skoodge, who cheered and patted him on the back. He was enjoying the silence between them as they walked toward the front of the hangar, but then Skoodge, chatty as ever, struck up a conversation.

"I'm sorry you had kind of a hard day today, but you seem like you're…I don't know, doing better lately."

"Better?" Zim asked.

"Yeah, for a while there you seemed tired all the time and you avoided everybody. But it seems like you're coming back around. Is there…any particular reason for that?" Skoodge asked, raising his antennae suggestively.

Zim narrowed his eyes, still unsure of how much he could tell Skoodge about his situation. "Not really."

"No? Are you sure?"

"Yes?" Zim was getting nervous now; did Skoodge know something?

"Okay," Skoodge said, putting his hands up. "Maybe it's not what I'm thinking, then."

"Well, what is it your soggy brain _is_ thinking?"

Skoodge's grin wobbled. "I dunno, I just assumed maybe things were going a little better with…with your…"

"With my _what?"_ Zim yelled.

"With your GIRLFRIEND!" Skoodge roared, his laughter finally bursting forth.

Zim's mind raced far back in time to the day Tak had arrived at Skool on Earth, and one of his annoying female classmates had shouted, _"Looks like Zim has a GIRLFRIEND,"_ in front of the entire class—he was as mortified now as he was then.

"WHAT?" he bellowed.

Skoodge wiped his eyes, catching his breath. "Oh, come on, Zim, we're not stupid. It's obvious that you and Tak are together."

_"We?_ What do you mean _we?"_ Zim demanded.

"Well…everyone, basically. At least the people I talk to."

_"Everyone_ in the Resisty thinks Tak and I are…together?"

"I mean…aren't you?" Skoodge asked.

Zim was ready to blow up on Skoodge for having such a stupid idea, but his rebuttal died in his throat. He and Tak _did_ spend a lot of time together, and now that she was free of the device Lattice had attached to her, they were communicating better than ever before. And when they'd gone out together, sharing drinks and laughter and the secret fears they'd been hiding from one another, Zim had never felt so…intimate? Was that the word? Whatever word described it—_if_ any word described it—he'd never experienced with another being before. Not even with Dib, who he'd hidden many things from even in their last days together on Earth. Could that mean that he and Tak were…

"What would be the point?" Zim asked, deflating.

Skoodge's antennae sprang up. "The _point?_ What do you mean? The point is that you _have_ someone! Someone that you care about and feel like you can always talk to and count on no matter what happens! And someone who feels the same way about _you!_ It's the most incredible, special feeling you can ever feel, and getting to have that every day is what makes the whole thing worthwhile."

"And what do _you_ know about it?" Zim asked, perhaps more harshly than he meant to.

Skoodge's face suddenly went dark green with a blush. He tugged at his jumpsuit, staring at his feet for a few moments before speaking again. "Well, uh…because…_I_ feel that way about someone."

Now it was Zim's turn to look surprised. "You do?"

Skoodge was looking at his hands, the thick fingers laced together in front of his jumpsuit. "You remember Tenn, right? From the Academy. She and I got pretty close during Invader training. Even after we got sent our separate ways for Impending Doom 2, we'd exchange messages with each other. I had to stop after Hobo 13, obviously. That's the thing I miss most about being part of the Empire—talking with her."

"Alright, I don't need an encyclopedia on the subject," Zim said dismissively. "And anyway, it doesn't explain why you and every other pig-brain on Cyberflox thinks Tak and I are—that we're—," he nearly choked on his tongue as he tried to find the right word.

"I just figured you and Tak were like me and Tenn," Skoodge said. "You two _do_ spend a lot of time together. And you sleep in that ship with her, don't you?"

Zim was sweating now. "That's because—it's just—,"

"Hey, don't worry about it," Skoodge said. "I didn't mean to get you worked up."

Zim sighed and pinched the skin between his eyes. He almost wished he was still on kitchen duty slaving over some stinking, bubbling stew.

"She's pretty," Skoodge mumbled.

"What?" Zim asked, exasperated.

"Tak. I was just saying she's pretty. Not as pretty as Tenn, but she has those sharp, intense eyes. Not many Irkens have eyes like that," Skoodge said.

It was true. Tak's eyes had given Zim many a deadly look, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't watch them, occasionally, as she pored intently over PAK parts while they were working. They even had an iridescent quality in the right light, like the oil slicks he'd seen in parking lots back on Earth. And beneath her left one she had a dark spot, like a freckle or mole. He'd nearly touched it the time he wiped ointment on her cheek after their fight over the ship. Did it have a different texture from the rest of her skin, he wondered? Or was it just discoloration?

His thoughts were broken by an echoing shout that sounded like it came from deeper inside the hangar, perhaps near the new battleship. It wasn't terribly unusual to hear people yelling—sometimes it was just one crew member talking to another who was high in the scaffolding. But this voice sounded angry. It sounded like Thork. He was about to say something to Skoodge, but then a second voice, the words unintelligible from distance, rang out. This voice sounded angry, but also afraid.

It sounded like Tak.

Zim's antennae were bolt upright, straining. "What is that? Do you hear that? Is that Tak?" he asked rapidly.

Skoodge listened, too. "Uh…I don't know. I can't tell."

More shouting reverberated in the air around them, charged with aggression. There were more voices now.

"Do you want to go back and—"

"Yes, let's go," Zim cut across Skoodge before he could finish, walking hurriedly along the now familiar pathways to the hangar's interior. Skoodge practically had to run to keep up.

Sure enough, a crowd had gathered beneath the hulking hull of the ship. Even amongst the throng, Thork was visible, his thick head glowering above the rest. Zim's eyes roamed the sea of navy-blue jumpsuits for Tak's curled antennae, but she was nowhere to be found. As he approached, Veedo, who stood on the outskirts, gave him a worried look.

"Hey, man," the Screwhead said. "Your girlfriend's in there."

"She's not my—" Zim started to yell, but the crowd erupted into cheers that drowned him out. Forgetting about Veedo, and even Skoodge, who tugged on his jumpsuit before losing grip, Zim shoved his way into the crowd until he found the epicenter of whatever was going on.

It was a fight. Tak's stance was wide, ready to dodge in either direction to avoid a punch from one of Thork's massive fists. She'd apparently already taken some sort of hit, because her left cheek, the one with the dark mark, was scraped and swollen. A tinge of pink blood peeked out from the corner of her mouth. She clutched her mop in both hands like a spear, her eyes sharp and hateful, unwaveringly fixed on her opponent.

"Last chance before I really get serious and knock your ugly green head off," Thork bellowed. "Where are you hiding that gun?"

"I told you, I don't know what you're talking about," Tak hissed. "You just want it to be me because I'm Irken!"

"Yeah, an Irken who spends her days sneaking peeks into the weapons room," Thork countered, knuckles cracking as he tightened his fists.

"If you don't want me looking in there, don't have me clean it! I'm a _janitor_, for Irk's sake!"

"Fine, you asked for it!" Thork said, winding up a punch. Tak lunged out of the way as his fist came down, ready to jab at his torso with the mop. But from Zim's angle it became evident that the first punch was a fake-out, the other fist now hurtling toward Tak as she thrust the mop forward. Rather than a punch, however, the hand opened to grab her by the neck. He lifted her easily, her arms and legs thrashing as she struggled to break free.

Even though watching the fight had felt slower than the expansion of the universe, the sprint and leap it took for Zim to wrap himself around Thork's massive forearm felt faster than light. He dug in with his claws and teeth—if Thork wanted to get him off, he'd have to let Tak go to do it. That's precisely what he did, because Zim felt a massive hand wrap around his torso. An instant later he was on the ground, vision tunneling from the impact. He pushed himself up as quickly as he could, cursing his legs as they wobbled beneath him.

"Oh, look at this!" Thork laughed. "Little Zim rushes in to help. Sort of off-balance it looks like—knocked a few back tonight already?"

"You wish. Then Zim might go easy on you," Zim growled, fighting a waver in his voice.

"You nicked my skin with those nasty teeth and pissed me off, so I'm gonna knock your head off, too. You're probably in cahoots with whatever she's got planned anyway," Thork said, baring his massive teeth in a threatening grin. But then, before he could rush forward to turn Zim into an Irken punching bag, he froze and collapsed face-first on the ground. Skoodge, who had apparently knocked him out from behind, landed gracefully on Thork's wide, muscled back.

"Ouch, _man,_ it's hard to get a good hit on the suprascapular when there's so much meat in the way," Skoodge said, rubbing the side of his hand. He gave Zim a worried smile and turned to break up the crowd, which looked on in awed silence. Zim, just as amazed, heaved a sigh of relief. Then he saw Tak a few feet away on her hands and knees, coughing as she drew in heavy breaths. He rushed over and fell into a crouch beside her.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Tak rasped, batting a hand at him.

"I'll help you," Zim said.

"I said I'm—," she froze when she looked over at him. "Oh no. Your head."

Zim put a hand to his head and felt a great deal of warm sticky fluid on the side that had hit the floor. His fingers came away covered in pink blood and his heartrate, which had only just begun to slow, picked up again. Images of the long medical bay corridor, flickering with that horrible yellow light, swam in front of his vision.

He swallowed and spoke rapidly. "W-Well, it's not the first time or the worst time my head's been split open. Look at that, I even rhymed! I can't be too terribly concussed if I'm making poetry!" He laughed shakily, the sound dying in his throat.

She seemed to sense what was bothering him, her eyes narrowing. Gingerly, she got to her feet. Then she offered him her hand. The gesture surprised him, but he took it and she pulled him up. The blood rushed to his head, throbbing and pumping out of his wound. His vision went staticky and he fell forward against her.

"Try not to get too much blood on me while I get you back to the ship. And don't you dare throw up on my boots again," Tak said.

"Wha—," Zim groaned, tapering off when she pulled him onto her back. His head sank over her shoulder, the rest of his body ragdolling in a similar manner. She gripped his wrists tightly in her hands to keep him somewhat in place as she walked. It reminded him of one of his last days on Earth, when Dib had carried him out of the crater that had once been his base. Why did he always need to be carried around anymore?

"But…the medical bay…" he groaned.

"Not this time," Tak said. "I've determined that the ship can care for your wounds. There's no need."

"But—,"

"Just be quiet."

And he was. He shut his eyes to ease the pain, and when he opened them again he was inside the ship, a beam of blue light rushing over him.

"Yep, he's concussed. Again," the ship said when it completed its scan. "He'll just need some rest. Plus some ointment and bandages for the wound."

Tak took the supplies the ship dispensed and crouched next to Zim, who sat against the far wall of the cockpit. "Alright. Let's get to work then," she said.

"Eh?" Zim said weakly. He'd been reaching for the supplies, but stopped midway.

She sighed. "Just let me handle it."

Before he could protest, she began wiping away excess blood, then swabbed on the antibiotic ointment. Her hands moved gently round and round his head as she wrapped and secured the bandages.

She gave her work a final once-over. "There," she said. Then, sheepishly, "Thank you, by the way."

"For holding still even though that ointment stings like a Shloogan cattle prod?" he asked.

"No, idiot," she said softly. "For, you know…getting that stink-brain off me."

Zim felt his face getting hot, so he just shrugged. "Yeah, well…it would jeopardize the mission if you were asphyxiated by a half-evolved moron."

"Still…I don't know, it surprised me."

"It surprised _me_ that you didn't take me to the medical bay."

Her eyes fell to the side, concentrating on the ship's control panel. "I know they'll probably get angry at me. But I'm so sick of them using us like that. So, screw it."

With her head turned, he could see dark splotches forming around her neck and jaw where Thork had grabbed her, not to mention the one on her cheek. "You're getting bruises," he said.

She put a hand to her neck, winced. "They'll go away."

Zim remembered a strange ritual humans sometimes performed on wounds. It usually happened between parent and child, but he often saw mated pairs engage in the behavior as well. If, for example, one human got a paper cut on their finger, the other might take their hand and press their lips to the wound to "kiss it better." It didn't actually heal the wound, but it usually calmed the other person down or made them smile. He'd never seen it done on a neck injury before, and it was absolutely inappropriate for Irkens to touch each other in such an outlandish way, but he wanted to do it anyway—kiss a ring around her throat. Maybe it was the concussion.

"What? Quit looking," Tak said, shrugging up her shoulders to hide her bruises when she caught him staring.

He started to sweat again, just like earlier when he'd been talking with Skoodge. He cleared his throat. "So, uh…why were you fighting?"

She made an angry scoffing sound. "He just came at me out of nowhere when I was walking back to the ship. He was questioning me about the gun. I tried to shake him off, but people started coming over and that egged him on, I guess. He only landed the one hit on me, though, right before you showed up," she pointed to her cheek. "Good thing we beat each other up all the time, right? I told you practicing was a good idea."

He smiled drowsily. "Practicing? I thought we were just blowing off steam."

To his surprise, she laughed—genuinely, if not with an edge of tiredness. It made him happy and nervous and something else all at once. What was that something else, that made his body feel full of cotton and his skin feel stuck with pushpins? Pillowy? Did she make him feel pillowy? Is that what Skoodge felt when he thought about Tenn, or received a message from her—like a Home Ec sewing project?

"Why do you keep staring at me?" Tak asked, tearing him from his thoughts again.

"Because you're in front of me," Zim answered simply.

Color flared up in her cheeks and she suddenly stood up. "I'm going to make sure Skoodge warded off the crowd okay. Try to rest."

Zim began to shout for her to wait, but with a hiss of the cockpit, she was gone. Too disoriented to go after her, he let his head fall back against the wall, the strange, pillow-y feeling fading away.


	17. Chapter 16

Zim woke up with a stiff neck. He hadn't meant to fall asleep sitting up. With a yawn, he prepared to stretch out on the floor. But the floor was empty—Tak wasn't there. He stepped out of the ship to see if she was in the workspace, but it too was still and silent.

"Ship," he said. "How long has it been since Tak was in proximity?"

"3 hours, 16 minutes, 19 seconds," the ship responded.

"And how long was I asleep?"

"3 hours, 11 minutes, 11 seconds."

Zim looked toward the entrance of the camp, antennae raised like he expected to hear her footsteps approaching any second. Finally, he turned back to the ship. "Open the storage panel where Tak placed the Blasty-C."

"Permission denied," the ship said.

"Eh? Why?" he demanded.

"Per Master's instructions, the Vort Model Blasty-C will only be retrieved upon both parties' agreement. Not if Zim just wants it for some stupid reason."

"Was that her exact phrasing?"

"Affirmative," the ship smugly replied.

Zim gave a frustrated growl and stamped his foot. "This is a special case! She told me she was just going to check on Skoodge, it shouldn't be taking her this long. You agree the amount of time she's been gone seems excessive, yes?"

The ship was silent.

"Well, I'm not letting some bucket of bolts tell me what I can and can't do! Tak might be getting her squeedlyspooch ripped out right now, so if you don't give me that gun in five seconds, I'm going to tear that panel off and get it myself!" he shouted. When the ship was quiet again, he grabbed a wrench from the work station. He was about to start pounding it against the cockpit when it finally spoke.

"You're really that concerned about Master?" it asked, the vocal output mimicking the inflections Tak's true voice would have when she was feeling hesitant or vulnerable.

He lowered the wrench. "Yes, I am."

Another second or two passed and the cockpit breezed open. Inside, along the left wall, a panel slid open to reveal the storage space where he and Tak had hidden the gun. He hopped inside and retrieved it, only to hide it again inside his jumpsuit, and rushed out of the camp toward the back of the hangar.

Dread reared up in his guts the closer he got to the medical bay. Tak could've been anywhere, but a grim intuition told him the long, nauseating corridor was where he'd find her. Sure enough, he heard voices coming from one of the rooms, although the length of the hallway made it difficult to pinpoint which one. Taking a deep breath to steady himself (and ease the throbbing in his head from the wound), he pulled the gun back out and entered the bay in a half-crouch. He ducked beneath windows and peered around open doors before leaping past, slinking from one shadow to the next. Finally, midway down, he found the room the voices were coming from. The door was open only by a sliver, but it was enough for him to discern the voices of Lattice and Ixane. He dared to lean over and peer through the narrow slice of light. He could make out Lattice's stiff white coat, Ixane's dark robes, and the dingy metal of an examination gurney, atop which rested something green.

The two medics jolted when Zim kicked the metal door open with a resounding clang, gun drawn, loaded, and aimed. Tak lay on her stomach on the gurney, head uncomfortably wrenched to the side, eyes partially open but dull and unseeing, tongue lolling out against the metal. The top of her jumpsuit had been pulled away to reveal her empty back. Ixane held another of those spider-like devices.

"And the hero arrives again," Lattice said, her cold voice taunting.

"You," Zim said, ignoring Lattice to point the gun at Ixane. "Put that thing down and back off."

Ixane's eyes, the only things visible within her dark hood, moved to Lattice, who nodded. Ixane placed the device on the gurney and backed into the corner where Zim indicated she should go.

"I guess we've solved the mystery of the missing gun. Not that the result is anything interesting," Lattice said.

"Wanna know what _will_ be interesting? Seeing how many shots it takes for you to hit the floor dead," Zim growled.

"I won't be the one hitting the floor," she said, her face cracking into a smile. His antennae sprang up, suddenly aware of movement behind him. But before he could turn around, a sharp pain erupted in the space between his neck and shoulder and everything went black.

When he woke up again, he was under a sharp, blinding white light. The surface he laid on was cold and hard, and when he tried to move his arms and legs, he found them bound in place. A face hovered over his, only partially blocking the light—the rest refracted within her gem-like skull, showering him with rainbows.

Realizing it was Lattice, fear and anger forced Zim back to alertness and he tugged furiously against his bindings. "What have you done? What is this?" he hissed.

Lattice smiled that broken glass smile again. "I always wonder what combination of questions you'll ask when you wake up back here. I even hope that maybe you'll come up with something original. But it's always the same thing: 'What is this? Where am I? What's happening to me?' Terribly uninteresting."

Because he could think of nothing else, Zim spat into her face. She jerked back, shutting her eyes. She raised a hand and wiped it away.

"That's a new one," she said. "But while unexpected, it's only going to make this final experiment more painful for you. I thought I'd give you a peaceful end when we finally reached the nadir of our testing, but now…I think getting to study your conscious response to death will give me much better data."

A cold sweat broke out on Zim's forehead. He wanted to ask more, but heard the sound of feet shuffling to his left. He turned his eyes as much as he could—his head was also restrained—and saw the familiar squat and stout shape of Skoodge in the doorway.

"Ah, yes, you," Lattice said, turning to Skoodge. "I suppose you don't want to watch your comrade die. Go make sure Ixane was able to take care of the other one."

"Y-you didn't tell me you were gonna kill him," Skoodge said in a small voice.

"Oh, come now, you must have known we would eventually arrive here. But remember," she produced a small black remote from her pocket and wagged it back and forth between her fingers. "Don't try anything. You're my little toy, too."

Zim's guts twisted in sick realization. Wordlessly, Skoodge left the room, the shape of him blurring into distance.

"You put one of those _things_ on him, too, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes, and hopefully that one's a bit sturdier," she said. "The one on your female comrade was more of a prototype than anything. It didn't even relay the signal to me when it released, whenever that happened. Between that and the gun, you two are quite good at being sneaky. It's to be expected of highly trained Irkens such as yourselves, I suppose, defective or not."

Zim had been struggling, but now he froze. "How did—,"

"Stolen data from the Empire, along with the contents of your PAKs. Honestly, you couldn't figure that one out?" Lattice said, annoyed.

In the vain hope that someone might be able to help him, or that he might manage to wriggle loose from his bindings, Zim decided to keep her talking. "So, these experiments; what's their purpose?"

She pursed her jagged lips. "You have quite the history, little Zim. And it's a history that corresponds with something very important that was set into motion long before you came into existence. We just needed to run some tests to ensure we got the right person. But when I saw that you were also living without your PAK, I had to know more. That's the scientist in me; always eager to poke and prod and slice things open."

"I'm sure," he said, swallowing. "And this very important thing…what is it?"

She appeared to deliberate, but spoke anyway. "The destruction of the Irken Empire."

"A lot of people are after that. What makes you so special?" he asked.

"Maybe I'd tell you if you hadn't spat in my face," she said. She raised her hand and placed two fingers together; with a series of minute cracks, they bonded together and sharpened into a single shining blade. "Let's stop putting off the inevitable, shall we? I've been wanting to crack open that head of yours ever since I first examined you. The knot Thork gave you might make an even cut difficult, but we'll get you open just the same."

Zim began to struggle again, and as he wrenched his body from side to side he caught glimpses of the other instruments of torture that filled the room, at last recalling what had happened to him in each: the volts of electricity delivered to him in the chair, the needles they stuck into his veins and PAK ports that fed data to the giant, flickering monitors, the yellow fluid in the bubbling tank that filled his lungs but somehow still allowed him to breathe. Then the restraints tightened on him until he could no longer move and Lattice's cold, sharp fingers pressed against his skin. There was a horrible pressure followed by the sting of being cut and his brain went into hysterics, desperate to escape. Months of reconditioning were shoved aside by old instincts and his skull and PAK ports screamed with the fiery pain of unresolved commands: DEPLOY LEGS, CUT RESTRAINTS, SHIELD BODY, FIRE LASERS, DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY. He was hallucinating now, the face above him melting and reforming—was it Dib standing overhead? Or Tak? The Tallest? The world wavered with panic like heat coming off asphalt on a summer day because his scalp was being sliced away and the bone would come next and then the pulsating meats of his brains would be removed and set on the table like a wet, bloody Thanksgiving dinner for everyone to dig into and who knew how much he would feel or for how long he would feel and whether his eyes would be able to watch it all happen without his brain behind them.

Then, with a pow, Lattice's head shattered into a billion sparkling fragments. The fingers she'd shaped into a scalpel to cut him slipped in an arch across his forehead as her body went limp. She hit the ground, her glassy corpse tinkling like a fully bedecked Christmas tree getting knocked over. Zim bellowed with pain and fear (or maybe he'd already been doing that), feeling hot blood running down the side of his head and pooling under him on the gurney.

And there she was—Tak. She breathed laboriously, jumpsuit dark with sweat, skin glistening in the harsh light, eyes sharp and dewy and iridescent as ever. It wasn't the hallucination he thought his brain would provide to soothe him into death. He figured there might be music and the sensation of driving, like there had been before, when he'd removed his PAK. Why was he seeing her, now? This aggressive, contrarian, hideous female?

The vision spoke. "Are your brains still in there?"

His brows knit together in confusion. Then GIR appeared between his face and hers. "Aw, man, you got a BOO-BOO!" the little robot shrieked.

The shrillness of the voice reminded Zim's head to throb and he realized, suddenly, that this wasn't a hallucination. Lattice was dead. Tak had saved him. He was alive. He tried to form a coherent sentence, making a series of sounds that were close to words but not quite intelligible.

"I'll take that as a maybe. GIR, stay where you are so he can't sit up," she said, then turned her head toward the door. "MIMI, find something I can dress his wound with."

Zim felt like an overheated computer, his body going numb. Once Tak had finished removing his restraints, he felt like the only thing preventing him from floating off the gurney was GIR, sitting on his chest and softly singing: "you go down and around and there's a weird tube, then it's right, right, wait no my head's on backwards we really go left…"

A cold hand slipped beneath his head and an even colder goo was applied to his head, counteracting the heat of his blood. Quasicrystalline freezing ointment, he assumed; it was effective at stopping blood flow and sealing up wounds until further treatment could be administered. Then came the starchy bandages, probably his old ones from earlier, swaddling his head until he was certain no one would ever be able to get at his brains again.

Zim's eyes had been closed through most of the process, but he opened them now to look at Tak. "You came for me," he rasped, finally thinking clearly enough to speak.

She shrugged, looking off to the side. "Yeah."

"Why?" he asked.

"Same reason you did," she replied. "This mission has been a ridiculous disaster. But it'd be even worse if we were doing it alone."

Something about the room felt different. Maybe the light shifted or the temperature rose or some white noise in the background finally cut out, but something had fundamentally changed. Probably blood loss. But Zim always pinned these sensations on extenuating circumstances: it's just the position we're in, it's just the concussion, it's just the blood loss. But the constant through it all, the only likely catalyst, was Tak.

"You've lost a lot of blood, but we need to move," Tak said. "It's now or never."

Broken from his thoughts, Zim assumed she meant they would be caught if they didn't get out of the medical bay. But that was only half of it. Now that he could turn his head, he saw the Blasty-C laying at the foot of the gurney. The gun she'd used to kill Lattice. The gun she now wanted them to kill the captain with. Tonight.

Vengeance coiled up hotly in his guts, but Zim felt like even his bones were weak. He'd never wanted to destroy the captain more, but he simply couldn't convince his body to move.

"Zim, come on," Tak said, impatience edging into her voice. A few more moments passed and she grabbed the front of his jumpsuit to pull him into a sitting position. But it all went too fast—his body wasn't ready. The room spun like some nightmarish carousel, galloping faster and faster until the G-forces were too great and he succumbed to unconsciousness.

* * *

**Author Note: Oooo, finally some insight into the Resisty's motives! More of that to come. Shit's really gonna hit the fan now, people. Hope you liked this update! Been eagerly waiting to post it for awhile. TTFN!**


	18. Chapter 17

Trays loaded with the day's slop clattered down on the long tables around him as schoolchildren found their unassigned but routine seats. Zim stared down at the wavering mass on his own tray, squeedlyspooch hitching as he pondered what it would feel like sliding down his throat.

"Afraid of beans, space-boy?" Dib asked. He sat on the other side of the wide greasy table, chewing on a sandwich. The boy usually made his own lunch a few times a week. Zim had considered packing on a few occasions, but worried that the sticky-fingered children would try to engage him in their snack bartering system— "I'll give you my crackers for your cool alien-looking candy bar."

"You don't eat them either, worm-baby," Zim shot back.

At that, Dib cracked a half-smile, twirling his keys around on his finger. They flew off and landed in a pile of leaves stuck between the edge of the sidewalk and the parking lot. Wait, how did they—

"Hey, I meant to ask, what happened to your head?" Dib asked, looking back over his shoulder as he dug around in the leaves.

A shock went through Zim's body and he reached up—his wig should have covered the scar he'd gotten from…where had he gotten it? But he felt only the smoothness of his skin, and when he caught his reflection in the grimy school windows, he realized with horror that he was out in the open undisguised.

"Dib, we have to—," Zim's voice cut out when he turned back to Dib but found himself at the mouth of a long, dark hallway. His heart beat frantically and suddenly he was flying, through no force of his own, down the narrow corridor, yellow lights snapping on just ahead of him as he passed. But before he could collide with the heavy metal door at the end, he teleported onto a metal gurney, where he was strapped in tight.

Dib stood over him again and gave a sad smile. "Funny how after all these years it wasn't me who cut you open," he said. He was pushed aside, disappearing into the shadows as Lattice stepped forward, every inch of her sharp and lethally shining. Zim screwed his eyes shut, preparing to be butchered, but the sensation never came. Instead, he heard a voice, an underwater-sounding voice that grew steadily louder. He opened his eyes and saw a round, battered blue door, illuminated in the darkness as though by a spotlight. The door was punctuated by green windows, and through the top one he could make out someone pounding at the glass. He wanted to help but realized he had an Irken candy bar in his hand. Probably from the lunch he'd packed earlier. He looked over at Dib, who stood next to him, watching the scene unfold.

"Here, take this," Zim said, holding it out to Dib.

"Will it make me sick?" Dib asked.

"Does exploding count as a sickness?"

Dib just shrugged and took the candy bar. With his hands free, Zim rushed over to the hatch to investigate. The door must've been stuck from the inside. He grabbed the hatch wheel in the center of the door and, with a great deal of strain, began to turn it. Finally, it loosened and he was able to pry the door open. In the center of the room was a fire. Tak stood over it, warming her hands after a long night of janitorial work on Dirt. She turned to him and planted her hands on her hips; but she also smiled.

"It's about time," she said.

Zim remained in the doorway and looked back at the cold, empty darkness behind him. "Don't you want to get out of here?"

"Do you?"

He spared one last glance at the wide open dark and stepped through the doorway. It was warm by the fire that he and Tak watched together. Their fingers were laced together, but he had no idea who had reached out first. And, anyway, he was waking up.

What surprised him was that the feeling of another hand in his remained even as the landscape of his dreams blurred out to become the experimentation room in the medical bay. He was still on the gurney, although the horrible fluorescent lights above him had been shut off. Turning his head slowly, he noticed that Tak had pulled a chair over next to the gurney—her arms were crossed under her chin, head tilted slightly in sleep as she leaned onto the cold metal. Her hand covered his own.

As he debated whether to get her attention or remain still, a shrill beeping sounded from door at the front of the room. He quickly repositioned his head and shut his eyes, recognizing MIMI's warning siren. Tak's warmth left him as she scrambled to meet the intruder. He cracked an eye open to watch the vague shapes moving near the door.

"Keep your hands up," Tak growled. "You have some explaining to do."

"W-wait, Tak?" It was Skoodge's voice. "Is that you?"

"You're bloody right it's me," she said. "Now get in here and shut the door."

The door closed. "I saw Ixane…so Lattice is dead, too?"

"Yes."

Hesitation. "And Zim?"

"No. And if you have any ideas, forget them or prepare to die."

"No, no, not at all! Now, I understand you're angry and you don't want to trust me—which is fine! But now that they're both gone, I can explain why I knocked you out. Actually, I'll just show you," Skoodge tugged off the upper half of his jumpsuit and turned toward Tak.

She gasped. "You have one of those _things!"_

He turned back around. "Wait, you know what it is?"

"Yes, unfortunately. I was outfitted with one for quite some time, but it broke and fell off. Did they…give you instructions? For Zim?"

"Yeah…they told me to keep an eye on you, too. That's why I knocked you out when you found me—they weren't happy that you didn't bring Zim here after the fight with Thork, so they wanted me to get you back here for…a talk."

"Those monsters. They really know how to keep people in the dark."

"Knew," Skoodge said, laughing awkwardly. He cleared his throat. "How did this happen, anyway? Last I saw, you were out cold on an operating table."

"My SIR unit and I share a neurological link through the device on my cranium," Tak said. "A distress signal is relayed to her whenever I am unexpectedly rendered unconscious. She found me and sent a jolt to my brain to reboot my senses. After Ixane and I were done with our little squabble I came back here to find Zim and took care of Lattice before she could scoop his brains out."

"Wow. You're really incredible, Tak. How come you never became an Invader?"

She sighed. "That's a long story."

Skoodge sighed too. "Well, anyway, I'm so sorry for what I did. If you had one of those things on you, you'll understand why I couldn't say anything."

"I do. But…I think I'm sorrier for Zim."

At her words, Zim's heart beat harder.

"Yeah, he really got the worst of it. I'll have to apologize to him, too, when he wakes up. I had to knock him out when I found him back here," Skoodge said.

"Back here?" Tak asked slowly.

Zim could tell from his tone that Skoodge was barely containing a smile. "I don't know how or why, but he must've realized you were in the medical bay. I was on covert guard duty in the room across the hall from yours and saw him break in on Lattice and Ixane while they were trying to put a device on your back."

She turned to look back at Zim and he shut his eye completely, hoping he hadn't given away that he was awake.

"He…he tried to help me," she said quietly. "So that's where the gun…I thought MIMI brought it…but…"

"Oh, so it _was_ you two who stole it," Skoodge said, chuckling lightly.

"Zim took it of his own accord," Tak said, vaguely annoyed. "Alright, Skoodge, listen closely to me. There's a reason Zim and I decided to stay with the Resisty, but I'll only tell you if you swear you're on our side now."

"Well, sure, but—oh, wait, he's waking up!" Skoodge said.

At that moment, Zim decided it was finally time to join the conversation. As he sat up, however, he realized there were IV-drips hooked into his right arm.

Tak was suddenly next to him, pushing lightly against his shoulders. "Hey, try not to move. I got you on some fluids to help you get back up to speed."

"Thanks," Zim said, trying to contain the color he knew was rising in his face.

"Skoodge is here," she said. "He has one of those things on him, like what I had. I didn't know until just now."

He nodded, still feeling tired. "The remote. It's in Lattice's lab coat."

She looked confused, but bent down to root around in the headless corpse's pockets. When she straightened up again, she had the small black remote in her hand.

"So, this is how you control it," she said, examining it. "I wonder if one of these buttons is a release function."

"Let's maybe not experiment with it too much," Skoodge said worriedly.

Tak handed the remote off to MIMI, who began a data scan. Zim had to admit he was jealous of the jury-rigged SIR-unit's myriad capabilities.

"So, what did you want to tell me?" Skoodge asked.

"We're here to take over the Resisty," Zim said, staring at the ceiling. "And as soon as I'm unhooked from these infernal tubes, we're going to kill the captain and complete our invasion."

"Whoa, seriously?" Skoodge said. "Why do you wanna do that?"

"Because we want to kill the Tallest, and the best way to get to the Tallest is with a really big ship with really big guns and a crew that knows how to shoot them," Zim replied.

Now Skoodge's eyes were wide, bouncing between Zim and Tak and back again. "You…you want to _kill_ the Tallest? Why?"

"Why wouldn't we?" Zim asked. "They _lied_ to us all about the necessity of PAKs for survival, they _lied_ to us about being defective, they _lied_ about my mission and made several attempts on my life, they sent Tak to _Dirt_, and they shot you out of a _cannon_. What more reason do we need?"

"I…I guess I understand," Skoodge said. "But every part of me is saying it's wrong."

"Why do you care so much all of a sudden?" Zim said, sitting up abruptly despite the rush of dizziness and the uncomfortable pull of the IV tubes. "You've been with the Resisty, the one force in the galaxy strong enough to take on the Armada, for who knows how long. Their mission is to take down the Empire! If it makes you so squeamish, why did you stay?"

Skoodge looked at his boots. "Honestly…because I never really believed they could _do_ it. And they were the only ones who would take me in. But now that you two want to take charge…well, there's no doubt we'll be taking on the Armada headfirst as soon as that ship is finished."

Zim glared at his comrade. "Then get out of here, Skoodge. If you aren't going to be an asset to our mission, crawl back to the Empire. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to have some _cannon fodder_ back in stock." He reached down to rip the IV from his arm, but Tak's hands stopped him. He met her eyes and was surprised by the look they gave him—_cut him some slack_, they seemed to say. As she removed the IV in a safer, gentler way than he would have, he took a deep breath.

"We've been through a lot together, Skoodge," he said. "Why not stick around? Help us do something really meaningful?"

Skoodge shuffled his feet. "I dunno…"

Zim watched Tak cover the IV puncture with a bandage and suddenly had an idea. "What if…we found a way for Tenn to join?"

Skoodge's antennae shot up. "What?"

"I mean, strategically it would make sense. She'd have more up-to-date information on the Empire than any of us do. And you could finally…I dunno, be happy together or something," he said.

"You really mean it?" Skoodge asked, stepping forward eagerly.

Zim sighed. "Yes, yes, I _really_ mean it. But you have to help us take over the Resisty first."

Skoodge looked like he would transform into a shooting star and blast through the roof of the hangar at any moment. "Wow, the chance to talk with Tenn again, to get to work with her every day…well, there's no way I can turn it down! You've got yourself a deal! Even though we'll probably all get killed!"

"Ignoring that last part, it looks like we've finally reached an agreement," Tak said. "Now let's go take care of the captain."

"What, right now?" Skoodge asked, coming down from his high. "You guys sure about that? You're both in rough shape," he said.

Zim and Tak looked at each other's worn faces, grimy and speckled with blood from various sources. "We can handle it," Zim said.

Skoodge sighed. "Listen. I know you have a mission and you're eager for revenge, but you're far from peak condition. The boss is a scrappy guy, and running into people on the way would alert the whole crew that something's up; soon you'd have the entire Resisty attacking you. You should really wait until you've healed before charging in."

"If we wait here, they'll notice we're not at our posts in the morning and start looking for us. Then what?" Zim shot back.

"Not necessarily," Skoodge said. "You and Tak both got in a fight with Thork. If you're not at your jobs tomorrow, they'll probably just assume you're in here recovering. As for me, I have a city patrol tomorrow. No one will care if I'm not around because I'm not supposed to be. It would be in your favor to rest and recuperate."

"What about the captain?"

"What about him? He's holed up in his quarters most of the time. If there's anyone who won't notice a couple missing Irkens, it's him."

Zim was about to counter again, but Skoodge was right on pretty much all accounts. It occurred to him that, of the three of them, only Skoodge was a full-fledged Invader—he'd even conquered his assigned planet, Blorch. Perhaps there was a reason for that. He glanced over at Tak, who was angrily tapping her foot in thought.

She hissed out a sigh. "We strike as soon as night falls again."

* * *

**Author Note:** Skoodge is a smart boy, a competent boy, a soft boy. That is all.


	19. Chapter 18

Over the next few hours, the trio of Irkens barricaded themselves in the experimentation room, raided every shelf and cabinet for medical supplies, and formulated the beginnings of a strategy. First on the agenda was weapons—they sent GIR and MIMI out to gather a few more handguns so they could each be armed when the invasion began. While they waited, they decided their positions for breaking into the captain's quarters: Skoodge would guard the door, Tak would be a go-between, providing relief to either Skoodge or Zim should they need it, and Zim would get the honors of confronting and taking down the captain. Then GIR and MIMI returned with two guns—Pog's old gun from Dirt, which Tak claimed, and a larger, two-handed gun that Skoodge took. Zim would use the Blasty-C.

There was only one problem: none of them knew where the captain's quarters were located. Skoodge had never been asked to guard it, Tak had never been asked to clean it, and Zim had never gone there for obvious reasons.

Then GIR chimed in. "I told you how to get there!"

"What have I said about lying, GIR?" Zim asked exhaustedly.

"I'm not!"

"Yes, you are."

"No!"

"Yes!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" GIR shrieked, banging his fists against his empty metal head.

"OKAY! You're not lying, now be _quiet!"_ Zim yelled.

"You gotta let me do my song," GIR said, crossing his arms. "You go down and around and there's a weird tube, then it's right, right, wait no my head's on backwards we really go left—" he sang, repeating the tune from earlier.

Zim was about to yell at him to shut up again, but Tak stopped him. "Wait," she said. "You told him a long time ago to follow someone from the kitchen back to the captain's room. I think he's giving us directions."

Zim turned from Tak to GIR and, grinning widely, grabbed the little robot in his arms. "GIR, you've done it! You've finally done something right for your master!"

"Yay, I'm not a failure!" GIR cheered.

Zim released GIR and put his hands proudly on his hips, turning back to Tak. "See? I _told_ you he wouldn't let us down. Let's see _your_ robot do that!"

Tak rolled her eyes and began to push herself to a stand from where she'd been crouching over diagrams they'd drawn in dust on the floor. But she gave a sharp gasp and nearly fell over instead.

"Whoa, are you okay?" Skoodge asked.

"Yes! Yes…just a cramp," she said awkwardly, standing up stiffly.

Looking at her jumpsuit more closely, Zim noticed that, while the sweat from her fight had dried up, there was still a large, dark section on her left side, and the jumpsuit itself appeared eaten away.

"You're hurt," he said, also coming to a stand. "You got shot by Ixane during your fight, didn't you?"

Tak backed away, covering the tattered section of her jumpsuit. For a moment it looked like she was trying to come up with a lie, but instead she just sighed and dropped her hands. "Yes, I was injured in the fight. But I had MIMI look over my wound while you were unconscious and I've treated it as best I can. I've determined that it will not hinder my ability to complete this mission, so there's no need to linger on it."

"You sustained a shot from a Blasty-C, of _course_ we need to consider it!" Zim barked. "The plasma could still be eating away at your innards as we speak! And you only _just now_ thought to tell us about it?"

"I said it's taken care of!" she yelled back. "And you're giving a prime example of why I didn't want to bring it up."

"Zim's right, Tak, this is a serious problem," Skoodge said. "If you haven't completely flushed out the wound, that plasma's gonna leave you looking like a Jaundician Pigbeast after a pinworm outbreak. You could drop dead before Zim gets a chance to finish off the captain."

She swallowed nervously. "I-I took care of it. I'm going to be fine."

"No. We're making a new plan," Zim said, clenching his fists. "I'll take GIR and MIMI with me to kill the captain. You and Skoodge will stay here to take care of your wound and get that horrible device off of his back."

"Absolutely not!" Tak yelled. "We'll stick with the original plan, because if you go by yourself, who knows what trouble you'll get into. I won't let you mess up this mission."

"Well, _I'm_ not letting _you_ mess up this mission by dissolving into a pile of goo on Lard Nar's doorstep!"

"Quit yelling!" Skoodge said. "You'll _both_ mess up the mission if you keep being loud and get us caught."

Zim lowered his voice. "I think I've proven that you can trust me. We both want the same thing: to destroy the captain and become the new rulers of the Resisty. But you can't rule anything if you're dead."

"We also can't rule if you screw up, which you have quite a propensity for," she said.

"Sure, maybe I will, but you know what happens when I screw up? I take people down with me. So maybe there'll be an unexpected explosion and a little extra mess to clean up but it won't matter because, even if I don't get the job done _exactly_ according to plan, the captain will be dead."

Tak stared at him, frustration tightening her eyes. Or pain. Perhaps a bit of both. He wondered how much plasma was left inside her, if she could feel it gnawing through her flesh and into her bones. And he was overcome by the sensation of the floor opening up beneath him, of freefalling through the darkness with no clue how long he had before a terrible, sloppy impact with the ground.

He took a deep breath and tried to maintain eye contact as he spoke. "It's true that I don't want your injuries to interfere with the mission. But I also don't want you to die."

"You just said the same thing twice. You don't want me there because you think I'll die and mess everything up," she said bitterly.

"No," he said. "I don't want you to die because…I don't want you to die."

She was taken aback, antennae dropping slightly. "Why?"

"Because then you'd be dead."

"So?"

"So…I would feel…bad…if you were dead. And I'm significantly less amazing when I feel bad, which makes me feel worse, which creates a whole vicious cycle that I'd rather not get trapped in. So…make sure all the plasma is cleaned out of your wound while I take care of the captain. Please," Zim said, awkwardly crossing his arms. Tak was frozen, eyes wide and calculating.

"That's the nicest thing I've ever heard you say," Skoodge said, his voice a shrill whisper. His lower lip was wobbling and his hands were clasped together beneath his chin.

"Shut up, Skoodge," Zim said, stomping over to the gurney where the three weapons were resting. He picked up the Blasty-C and shoved it inside his jumpsuit.

"Wait," Tak said. He turned around and felt a shock run up his spine when he discovered she was only a few paces away from him. She continued before he could say anything. "MIMI just finished examining the remote to Skoodge's device. I want to upload the information to one of these computers before she goes."

He blinked a few times. "Okay," he said. She whisked past him, beckoning for MIMI to follow her. Soon the large, ever flickering monitors at the back of the room were filled with crawling lines of code, and before long the data upload was complete. Tak unplugged MIMI and the little robot marched straight to Zim, saluting him. Then she shot out her grappling arm appendage to grab GIR, dragging him over. He giggled maniacally and gave a goofy salute as well.

"Alright then," Zim said, his voice feeling echo-y in the silent room. "I guess I'm off."

"You've got this, Zim," Skoodge said. "And don't worry about Tak. Our first order of business is getting that wound properly taken care of. Who knows? You might be done and back here before we even get that thing off my back!"

"He'll have to be pretty quick," said Tak. She turned away from the computer monitors, pointed the remote at Skoodge's back, and pressed a button. Skoodge gave a little yelp and quickly yanked down the top of his jumpsuit. The device fell out and hit the ground like a gigantic dead bug.

"Oh, WOW!" Skoodge cheered. "You're amazing, Tak! Gosh, that's such a _relief!_ I don't know about when you had yours, but my back has been so _itchy!"_ He reached around as far as he could to scratch the irritated spots between his shoulder blades.

"Good for you, Skoodge," Zim sighed. "GIR, MIMI, let's go."

"Zim," Tak said.

With his hand on the door, he turned to look at her.

"If you mess up…make sure you get back here. This is the perfect setup for me to tear out your guts," she said.

He shook his head, a small smile creeping onto his face as he recalled their first day on Dirt together. "Maybe Skoodge can help you work on your persuasiveness while I'm gone," he said.

Before she could say anything more, he left the experimentation room with the two robots in tow. For once, he stood at the end of the medical bay corridor looking toward the bright square of the exit, the hangar and the Resisty's crew and the captain all waiting just beyond for him to come out and stir up some trouble. Instead of dread, an old eagerness swelled in his guts—an eagerness to destroy those who tried to trample him under their boots, to rule over everything they thought was securely in their clutches. With a spring in his step he hadn't had since his days on Earth, he marched onward.


	20. Chapter 19

GIR's directions were far from perfect, which was problematic for sneaking around; it wasn't quite nightfall, so Resisty crew members were still milling around in most parts of the hangar. At one point he was spotted by Veedo and Spleenk from the kitchen and had to haphazardly lie his way through a conversation with them. After that, he had to pretend to head toward his and Tak's camp, then loop his way back around, which threw off GIR's already questionable route even further. But, just when Zim had decided GIR's directions had come from a video game or some other unhinged virtual reality, they came to a short corridor with a heavy, crooked metal door at the end. GIR pointed happily and began to cheer and Zim hugged the little robot to his body to stifle him before he got too boisterous.

Staring at the door, Zim realized he didn't have a solid plan for breaking in or getting the captain's attention. He put a hand to his chin, thinking, then nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw MIMI charging up some sort of blaster housed in her large arm appendage. He waved his hands frantically, signaling for her to stop. Miraculously, she did as she was told, but narrowed her already glaring red eyes at him in a gesture very reminiscent of her master.

Then, right in the middle of his sigh of relief, he spotted GIR at the door. The little robot tossed it open and waltzed inside like he was returning to the base back on Earth with an armful of fast food. Seconds later, the annoyed voice of the captain echoed into the hallway. No choice but to move forward.

"Hands up!" Zim bellowed as he kicked the door the rest of the way open, gun aimed and loaded. Lard Nar let out a shriek of surprise, hands flying upward. GIR, who stood nearby, also raised his hands.

"GIR, quit being a nuisance and do as you're told!" Zim scolded.

"But you told me hands up!" GIR said, hands still in the air.

"I wasn't talking—just get over here!" he ordered furiously. Finally, GIR saluted and returned to his side, at which point MIMI dragged him to the end of the hall for watch duty.

"It's a surprise to see you back here," Lard Nar said, having regained some of his composure. "Alive, anyway."

"Being unkillable is a special skill of mine," Zim replied. "You, I'm not so sure."

Lard Nar swallowed. "So Thork's suspicions were true. You Irkens really are undercover for the Empire, here to overthrow me."

"Overthrow you, yes. For the Empire, not so much," Zim replied. "But you have to realize the bigger reason I'm here. I want to know what twisted, horrible things you've been doing to me back in that torture chamber you call a medical bay. I want all the answers."

"What if I don't tell you?"

"You die."

"And if I don't tell you in spite of that?"

"Then the moments preceding your death become much less comfortable."

Lard Nar heaved a long, drawn-out sigh, hands falling limply to his sides. "When you came here and I first formed my hypothesis about you, I considered what I might do if you discovered what was happening and confronted me. Ideally, I would've had Thork here to grind you into sludge. But believing that Lattice had taken care of you lulled me into a false sense of security—I admit my hubris—so I already sent him away for the night. So…I'll tell you. I suppose you have a right to know, and if you really aren't with the Empire like you claim, I can only hope that having this knowledge will help the Resisty and all the peoples of the galaxy."

"Are you planning on getting to that part sometime tonight or are you just enjoying the sound of your voice?" Zim asked impatiently.

Lard Nar shook his head and gestured for Zim to follow him deeper into the room. Zim lowered the gun slightly, gave a quick glance over his shoulder to GIR and MIMI at the end of the hallway, and followed. The captain was near three large monitors, fingers flying over their surface to pull up data files labelled "Irken-Zim." At a glance, their contents appeared to be medical data and information that may have been pulled from his PAK parts—the ones that had gone missing and been returned over and over again.

"You've made quite a name for yourself amongst the Irken race, is that not correct?" Lard Nar asked, pausing momentarily to look over his shoulder.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"You have an impressive record," Lard Nar continued. "You plunged Irk into darkness when you were only a smeet and later singlehandedly thwarted Operation Impending Doom 1. You were responsible for the deaths of not one, but two Tallests. You even brought Operation Impending Doom _2_ to a halt because of a Control Brain malfunction that occurred at your Existence Evaluation—the evaluation that you failed, yet also survived. How does all that happen to one Irken, Zim? Or, perhaps a better question," he turned around fully, leaning ever so slightly forward. "How do you _think_ it all happened?"

An unnerving chill rattled Zim's bones. He was finally here; at the precipice of answers he'd been searching for since he joined the Resisty—maybe even some he'd been searching for much longer than that. The dramatic irony of standing before someone who knew so much more about his life than he did reminded him of his Existence Evaluation, the Tallest and the Control Brains smearing all of his actions before him like bug guts smashed on a window, demanding to know why he did it, or how he did it. But he didn't have any answers. He didn't know why destruction seemed to follow him wherever he went. Half the time he didn't even mean for his tragedies to happen. They just…did.

Then the Control Brains tried to suck the life out of him. He could feel his mind being pulled through their fiber optic cables, melding with their enormous, collective consciousness of a thousand billion voices, followed by the gut-punching knowledge that he wasn't there to join them, that he would _never_ join them. But something happened that he didn't understand—_couldn't_ understand because it was too big for any one mind to contain, let alone comprehend. Just like that he was being rewarded with a joy ride in the _Massive_, manning the controls until the Tallest had had enough and ordered the guards to kill him. He escaped, of course, charting an empty, winding course back to Earth and realizing along the way that something had gone wrong in his PAK. The rest, as humans liked to say, was history.

"Well?" Lard Nar asked.

Zim had been staring at a crack in the floor. He met Lard Nar's eyes and spoke each word deliberately. "I don't know. I just think destruction is nice."

"Really," Lard Nar said, an amazed disappointment hardening his voice. "You mean to tell me you've never _once_ stepped back to question why you do the things you do? Did you _really_ always assume it was because you were 'defective' or whatever it is the Empire calls their pests? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You Irkens all think you're the most powerful and cunning species in the galaxy, but you're wrong. The Vortians got the best of you long ago and the proof is right here."

Zim looked around the room, then back at Lard Nar. "Where is it?"

"It's you, Zim," Lard Nar grinned wolfishly. "It's by design that you're such a monster; you are the Vortians' curse upon the Irkens. Allow me to give you a history lesson. Don't fret about that abysmal attention span of yours—this is sure to keep you interested.

"300 years ago, it became clear to my people that the Irkens would betray the armistice signed between them and invade, just like they'd done to every race they'd allied with before. Because our scientists worked so closely with Irken technology, including the Control Brains, they took it upon themselves to plan a sort of counterstrike, something that would stop or at least slow the spread of doom and terror across the galaxy. For the next hundred years, the scientists worked in secret to develop what they called the Curse. The Curse was a program, a virus, that they encoded into the Control Brains' collective consciousness, where someday it would emerge at random via PAK download upon the birth of a smeet. Once connected with organic life, its true nature would be revealed: a penchant for destruction that would tear apart the Empire from within. This would only be amplified by the virus stunting the host's growth, ensuring that their society would ostracize them and make them—and the virus—hungrier for attention. But the true beauty of the Curse was that it was unstoppable by even an Existence Evaluation. If the Curse were to reenter the collective consciousness, the wrathful hunger that grew for so long within the host would devour all of the Control Brains' data and cause the collapse of the entire system. And, by extension, the Empire," Lard Nar was practically frothing when he reached the end of his tale, so he took a breath to steady himself. "Sound familiar, Zim?"

There it was: the answer Zim had been searching for his entire angry, unfortunate, lonely life. The reason he was so different from everyone else, the reason he was so drawn to wreck everything he touched, was because he had literally been programmed to be that way. He stared down at his hands, one empty and one holding the lethally shining Blasty-C, his eyes going hazy from remaining motionless too long.

"So…all those experiments…the secrecy…using Tak and Skoodge as your pawns to keep track of me…it was to confirm your suspicions that I was the receiver of the Curse," Zim said hoarsely.

"Yes," Lard Nar said. "And we were correct. The data stripped from your PAK parts aligned with the timeline of the Curse's activation and also held traces of the code, corrupt as it was."

Zim's eyes shot up. "If you got everything your needed from my PAK, why the experiments?"

A smirk crawled across Lard Nar's features and he shrugged. "You're an Irken without a PAK. We couldn't turn down the opportunity to study you, learn which weaknesses could be exploited—,"

Zim deftly closed the space between himself and the captain and pistol-whipped him across the skull. Lard Nar's legs collapsed beneath him and he hit the ground, fighting to retain consciousness. Green blood leaked eagerly from the wound.

"Everybody thinks it's so much fun to poke and prod at Zim any way they like because they think they're in control. But guess what? I'm the one with the gun," Zim hissed, stalking back and forth in front of the captain, a predator preparing for the killing blow.

"Always anger and violence with you," Lard Nar said dizzily. "If anything, it should make you happy knowing that you were created for the purpose you're seeking to fulfill."

"I made that decision myself," Zim growled.

Lard Nar's eyes snapped up to meet his. "Did you?"

"I'm no longer tied to my PAK. I am my own being."

"But have you really _changed_ at all? Yes, you grew a few inches because you were cut off from the Curse's growth blockers, but it's clear to me that you're still the angry, obstinate, destructive buffoon you've always been from the start."

"You know nothing," Zim said. "You have an amalgam of Zim data from your wretched little experiments and the exploitation of my PAK. But you know nothing of the Zim that's going to end you with the gun I just cracked over your skull."

"But I do know," Lard Nar said, wincing as he used the control panel to push himself into an awkward crouch. "You still want to kill the Tallest. And then what? Don't you want anything more out of the short life you have left than to wreak havoc on your own Empire?"

Zim stopped pacing but didn't respond immediately. His guts sank as he considered that the captain might be right; he hadn't spared much thought for what would happen once the Tallest were dead. He just wanted them gone. But then he recalled his nights on the hangar roof, when he'd seek out the backwards Orion and formulate how his victorious return to Earth would play out, picturing Dib's amazement as he regaled him with stories about his long adventure in the worst corners of the galaxy. And he recalled the other rooftop night not so long ago when all he wanted was to take hold of Tak's hand, hijack a ship, and blast onward, maybe to Earth, maybe to some other uncharted sector of space, maybe even on a hunt for the universe's largest donut hole—it didn't matter, as long as they went together.

The corners of Zim's mouth twitched, but he managed to maintain his stoic expression. "Yes," he said.

"Oh? And what would that be?" Lard Nar asked patronizingly.

"Nothing you need to know," Zim said. He raised the gun and fired.

* * *

**Author Note: AAAAAAAAAAAAA I've been waiting so long to finally reveal what the heck is going on! There's still plenty more to come, but the central mystery is out! Let me know what you thought - you know I love those sweet, sweet reviews. Toodles!**


	21. Chapter 20

Zim sat on the edge of Lard Nar's cot, slouching forward and staring down at his boots. He'd sent GIR and MIMI back to the medical bay for Tak and Skoodge, so he was alone. He had been for some time now. Enough time to open a few of his files on the captain's computer and read the results of the completed tests they'd run on him. There was basic information: his height, weight, age, and other identifying features. But there was also a lifespan prediction based on his health and the damage the PAK removal process had wrought on his body.

He had 30 years, at best. With a fully functional PAK, he could have had another 200, at minimum. He wondered if he had doomed Tak and Skoodge to such short lives, too. Or maybe they had longer because they were in better health at the time of their PAK removals.

Either way, he now had a choice to make. Did he really want to spend more of those last 30 years running the Resisty and trying to kill the Tallest? Or did he just want to go back to Earth, the only place that felt vaguely appealing to him, and live out the remainder of his days in peace? But what a boring 30 years it would be living in disguise amongst the humans again, kicking old poop cans down the sidewalk and dodging structured pleasantries about the planet's nonsensical weather patterns. And for Irk, nothing would change: the Tallest would rule until someone taller usurped them, the Empire would keep invading every vulnerable planet in the Armada's path, and the Irken people would go on living a lie under the Control Brains.

Did he really care, though? His people had scorned him his entire life just for being short. Sure, he blew some things up that he shouldn't have, but he was a smeet, smeets got into trouble all the time—plus, he'd been under the influence of the Curse. He could think of more than a few incidents involving Red and Purple that should've gotten them kicked out of the Academy, but nothing happened because they were tall and decently competent as soldiers. So what if they all kept on suffering? They were all horrible and deserving of their fates as cogs in a pointless machine.

Except that they weren't all horrible. There were Irkens like Skoodge, who were kind and got ahead based on their own skill and intelligence, but were still treated like dirt because of their height. There were Irkens like Tak, who were loyal and worked themselves ragged for recognition and success, only to be cast out on the fringes of society because of a fluke power outage. And there were Irkens like Zim, who just wanted someone to be proud of them, only to be cursed into ridicule by systems put in place long before they were hatched. If all those things weren't fair to him, or Skoodge, or Tak, were they fair to anyone else?

And, anyway, Zim had done a great many things wrong by his people. Maybe this was his chance to finally do something right.

With a sigh, Zim planted his hands on his knees and pushed himself to a stand. He got lightheaded from the pain of his wounds, loss of blood, inadequate rest, and all the terrible things he'd learned coming to rest over his shoulders. Still, he kept pushing forward. There was more to be done before he could curl up somewhere and sleep.

Although there were no windows in the part of the hangar leading to the captain's quarters, Zim knew it was morning when he entered the main lobby. Thork was coming, likely on his way to give the captain his morning briefing. The Gluteomaxian stopped in his tracks when he saw Zim, still heavily bandaged around the head, wielding a gun, and splattered with remnants of Lattice's blue blood and Lard Nar's green.

With a growl, Thork rushed forward. "What have you done, you little—,"

Zim fired the Blasty-C. Gluteomaxian blood was violet, apparently. Thork's heavy body crashed to the ground, skidding slightly before coming to a halt, the empty space where his head used to be steaming in the open air.

The gunshot acted like a black hole, loudly alerting the void of its presence before sucking everything toward its epicenter. First came Veedo and Spleenk from the kitchen, which was the part of the hangar nearest to the labyrinth of hallways leading to the captain's room. Next came a few stragglers from the barracks, then some from the construction crew, and others from who knows where. All the different sizes, shapes, and colors of eyes fell on Zim, standing at the downed trunk of Thork's lifeless body. It was finally time.

He took a deep breath and shouted. "Listen up, people! From now on, Zim is the commander of the Resisty and the captain of this new vessel. You take orders from me and if you don't like it, well," he planted a foot between Thork's shoulder blades. "I'll make sure you're not around long enough to file a complaint."

"So, you _are_ with the Empire," a Screwhead growled. "Just like Thork suspected all along."

Zim's antennae popped up. "Eh? No, I'm not with the Empire."

A wave of confusion washed over the crowd. "You're not?" someone asked.

"No, I want to see an end to the Empire like the rest of you," Zim said. "The mission is still a go. It's just…under new management."

A rush of whispers made its rounds, reminding Zim of dry, rustling leaves in a crisp autumn breeze back on Earth. His mind was trying to run away, back across old familiar blacktops where his biggest worry was how his squeedlyspooch would react to the cafeteria food that day. But he couldn't lose focus now.

"What if we don't like the new management?" an android-looking alien asked.

Zim raised the Blasty-C again. "I literally just told you."

Veedo stepped forward, crossing his thick arms in front of his grease-splattered apron. "Are you really serious about continuing the mission?"

"Does nobody listen to Zim? Yes!" he cried.

Veedo nodded. "Then we accept you as captain."

"Wow, really?" Zim asked. "We're not gonna have an epic showdown here on the hangar floor in which I emerge victorious atop the mountain of your corpses?"

"Nah, we'd rather stay alive," Spleenk said.

"Doesn't matter who's captain as long as we get to kick some Irken posterior! No offense," Florgy said, farting lightly in his awkwardness.

Zim scanned the crowd, then shrugged. "Well, alright then. Your captain orders you to get back to work!"

The crew members dispersed, apparently unbothered by the events that transpired as they returned to their posts. Zim heaved a sigh, at last allowing the gun to drop heavily to his side. But he couldn't fully relax just yet. His eyes flitted back and forth as the crowd thinned out, searching. Finally, he found them: Skoodge, Tak, and the two robots between them, standing further out, watching him. GIR was the first to rush toward him, Skoodge following in a gleeful bounce, and Tak more slowly with MIMI just behind her for support.

"Well?" Skoodge asked breathlessly.

Zim swallowed and nodded. "Target eliminated."

Skoodge cheered and pumped his fists in the air. "Invasion accomplished! Zim, you did it!"

"I…yes, I did."

"Oh, come on, be a _little_ excited about it!" Skoodge wrapped an arm around Zim's shoulders. "You're Invader Zim, Conqueror of the Resisty, the greatest Irken Empire resistance force in the galaxy!"

"He's right," Tak said. "I can't believe I'm saying it, but you actually did something right, Zim. You…you _did_ it."

Zim's whole body felt light and numb, kept grounded only by Skoodge's jostling. He did it. He _did _it. The words ran laps inside his bandaged skull, building energy as they circled. He _did_ it: he'd set out on a mission and he'd completed it, with no unplanned explosions along the way. Now he knew for certain that the captain had been wrong about him. He _had_ changed, freed from the Curse, into what he was always meant to be—an Invader.

Unable to contain the joyful electricity within him any longer, Zim broke out into hearty, victorious laughter that echoed across every dusty wall and damp rafter of the hangar. He clenched his fists in triumph, then grabbed onto Skoodge and spun in dizzying circles with him as GIR and MIMI scurried around them. Then he took one of Tak's hands and they linked together in a circle, jumping and spinning and laughing until tears poured from their eyes and they had no breath left to give to their happiness.

Zim released their hands and spread his arms wide, as though trying to gather the entire hangar into his embrace. "Yes, YES! It's all mine! All—," he turned back to his comrades, still catching their breath. "Ours. This hangar, that great big ugly ship, the Resisty, it's all ours! No more experiments! No more nasty jobs! No more getting bossed around! _We're_ the bosses now!"

"Well, sort of," Tak said, hands planted on her hips. "You _did_ declare yourself captain."

"But what's a captain without a fleet commander?" he said to her. "Or a first mate?" he said to Skoodge. "No, I may be captain, but I'll make sure no one _ever_ pushes either of you around again! Except for me. Because I'm amazing."

"Sounds alright to me, sir!" Skoodge said, saluting him.

Tak shook her head but smiled. "Well, then, captain. What's our first order of business?"

Zim stuck a finger in the air, ready to declare their next course of action. Then he brought it back down to tap thoughtfully at his chin. "I…we should…uh…hm…that's a tricky one."

"I don't know about you all, but it's been a crazy day. Or two. I don't know how long it's been," Skoodge said. "Maybe we could just start with a nice long sleep?"

Zim's whole body started feeling heavy again, remembering how tired he'd been when he exited the captain's quarters. "As captain, I approve your suggestion," he said.

All of them walked across the hangar floor together, gazing at the bustle of bodies and the massive new ship as though for the first time, or as though it truly meant something to them now. Skoodge ambled toward the barracks, eager for his own cot, leaving Zim, Tak, and the SIR units alone on the rest of their journey to the camp. Tak's ship celebrated their arrival when they stepped into its scan radius, but they quickly quieted it as they climbed inside and collapsed on the smooth, cool floor, back-to-back just like any other day. But as exhausted as they were, neither of them could fall asleep.

Zim spoke. "Your wound. Did you and Skoodge get all the plasma out?"

"I wouldn't be here if we didn't," Tak said.

"Are you in pain?"

"Yes. Not enough to be concerned. It's a healing kind of pain."

"Good."

A long pause.

"So, are you going to tell me, or…" she tapered off.

"About what?"

"Don't play dumb," she said, her warmth leaving him as she sat up. "What happened with the captain? I won't be able to sleep until I hear how you enacted our revenge."

Zim didn't sit up, arms wrapping around his torso as though fighting off cold. How much should he tell her? How much did she need to know?

"I'm too tired," he said.

"Liar," she said. "If you wanted to sleep so badly, you would've kept your big mouth shut."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, that doesn't make any sense. You, _Zim_, not wanting to boast about the only victory you've ever achieved?" When he didn't say anything, she continued. "Wait, don't tell me you're _bothered_ by killing him."

"Don't be stupid."

"Then what's the problem?"

"I SAID I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!" Zim yelled over his shoulder, voice deafening within the confines of the ship. Tak froze, antennae flattened against her skull. But her apprehension soon turned to anger and she grabbed ahold of his shoulder, wrenching him up so he couldn't look away from her anymore.

"I don't know what's gotten you in such a sour mood all of a sudden, but you'd better tell me what it is," she hissed. "You don't get to start hiding things from me again just because you're captain. You need to communicate openly with me so the second half of this mission goes _perfectly._ And…so I can help you."

Zim could see his reflection in her eyes and was disappointed by how poorly he was hiding his melancholy—and his surprise at her words. "This isn't anything you can help me with, Tak," he said.

"Try me."

She wasn't giving up. He sighed and took her by the wrists so she would release him. Back in his lap, his hands tugged on the loose fabric of his jumpsuit the way they used to with the hem of his Invader uniform.

"I found out what all the experiments were about," Zim said.

Tak nodded, intently focused on him as she mirrored his kneeling position on the floor across from him.

"You remember when we first got here, to Cyberflox?" he asked. "You told me there was something wrong with me beyond being defective."

"I've said that a lot of times," she said.

"I'm quite aware," he said. "But…you were right, in a way."

Zim told her the entire story, about the Vortians' plan, the purpose of the Curse, and how he'd been the unfortunate soul to carry it with him until he separated from his PAK. All the while, she listened, nodding in understanding or saying a few words for clarification. He finished, leaving out the discovery of his lifespan prediction; he wasn't ready to say it out loud yet.

"So…you were basically engineered to be the bane of Irk's existence, a bio-weapon of sorts," she said.

He nodded.

"It's ingenious. But terrible," she said. "So, that's what got you so upset?"

"Of course it is. How would _you_ feel if you found all that out?"

"Like you do, I suppose. But I wouldn't let it taint my victory," she said. "And, anyway, I don't think learning about this Curse thing is all bad. If some of that code can still be salvaged from your PAK, maybe we could use it to craft a weapon against the Control Brains. Might as well take them down if we're killing the Tallest, right?"

He raised his eyes from his lap to look at her. "You're being uncharacteristically optimistic."

"I can't help it. This is the happiest I've been in decades," she said.

"Even with a blast wound in your torso?"

"When I think of finishing that ship and flying it across the galaxy to blow the Massive to smithereens, I barely feel it."

Tak looked serene in the dimness. Her eyes took on that special iridescence, as though catching the light of a thousand tiny explosions in the vacuum of space. Zim thought if he could help keep that light in them for the rest of her days, however many she had left, he'd be able to live his last 30 years in peace. Even if there were countless space battles waiting on the horizon.

"Well, if we want to get that ship off the ground, we'd better get some rest," he said. "Can't boss people around if we're asleep standing up."

She smiled, giving a determined nod, and laid back down. He followed, their backs touching again, and he shut his eyes.

"Zim?" she asked a few moments later.

"Hm?"

"Skoodge told me that you tried to help when I got taken to the medical bay. So, uh…thank you. For that."

"Oh, uh…you're welcome," he said. After a pause, he continued. "You saved me, too, so…it's not a big deal. Forget about it."

She laughed softly. "You're welcome, Zim."

Finally they were quiet and soon grew still from sleep, dreaming themselves closer to a brand new day.


	22. Chapter 21

Before they had a solid grasp of just how dismal the Resisty's finances were, Zim, Tak, and Skoodge bought themselves brand new tailored clothes—they had to be easily distinguishable from the rest of the crew, after all. Their new uniforms were cohesive, yet unique to each of their tastes. They were mostly black, with a single accent color: Skoodge's was a more fitted jumpsuit with shoulder pads; Tak's had long front and back panels with side cut-outs for a full range of leg motion; Zim's had pointed coattails. All had a colored circle between their shoulder blades with a black X struck through the center. And new gloves and boots to finish.

Time began to move quickly. Ship construction ran double-time to account for design improvements Tak had drawn up and new relationships had to be forged with the Resisty's old sources of funding, mostly civilizations that had been taken over by the Empire. They were none too pleased to find a trio of Irkens at the helm of their resistance, and a few went completely dark. Every day was spent wondering if they would have enough to purchase armored paneling for the ship's exterior, or supply every mouth with rations for the next cycle, or even just power the hangar for another night. But they couldn't turn to the black market for funding—nothing they had to spare was worth selling.

Then a miracle happened. Skoodge had been broadcasting encrypted messages to Tenn's VOOT runner after getting no response from Planet Meekrob in the hope that she at least still had the same ship. One night, after many had passed without a response, another encrypted message came through. It was only two words: "I'm here." But it began a long chain of communication that gave the Resisty intel—and intel on the Irken Empire was just as valuable as big, shiny weapons on Cyberflox. Needless to say, they no longer had to worry about keeping the lights on.

But now Skoodge was getting antsy.

"She's out in the Scabs, Zim! You remember how nasty it was out there," he wailed, begging Zim to let him go get Tenn for the third time that week.

Zim had only hazy memories of training out in the Scabs, probably because he'd blocked out that period of his life. The Scabs were a wretched chain of dwarfish, misshapen exoplanets out on the drop-off of the galaxy—only darkness lay beyond, and it was said that any ships that ventured out into that everlasting, starless night were never seen again. At the time, Zim couldn't fathom why someone would want to run off into that terrifying beyond when they were so close to gaining Elite statue; the Scabs hosted the last stages of training needed to qualify for the Elite-level testing back on Devastis. All but a small, privileged portion of soldiers (i.e. those who were tall enough) were sent to that loathsome collection of dirt wads to separate the smeets from the Irkens who were truly worthy of enacting their Empire's galactic conquest.

"What on Irk is she doing in the Scabs?" Zim asked, trying to contain a shudder.

"Well, her invasion of Meekrob failed. Something about being sent a batch of defective SIR units," Skoodge replied. "The only reason she wasn't taken out by the natives was because Meekrob happened to be the next stop on the Armada's flight path; they nuked the planet before they could muster up a good defense force. The Tallest weren't very happy with her and the Control Brains reassigned her to training instructor out in the Scabs."

"Not too bad, all things considered. She could've been sent to Foodcourtia," Zim said bitterly.

"I'd rather go through a hundred Foodenings than be stuck in perpetual darkness for the rest of my days," Skoodge said.

"When's the last time you saw a Foodening?"

"Come on, Zim, you're missing the point!" Skoodge yelled. Zim was surprised to hear him sounding legitimately angry. "You promised me that if I helped take over the Resisty, I could go get Tenn, and now I'm holding you to it. I can't stand to think of her being miserable out there anymore!"

"Does she know the full extent of our operation?"

"Huh?"

"In your conversations with her, have you told her that this group of aliens you're staying with are a resistance force against her Empire? That after every chit-chat you have with her, you feed her intel into the enemy's network? Oh, and also, does she know that _I'm _here? You know, the bane of the Empire's existence? Who's supposed to be dead?"

"I…I've hinted that there are anti-Irken sentiments."

"And? How did she take that?"

"She was a little upset by it at first," Skoodge said, looking down at his boots. "But, the more we've talked, the more she's revealed that she's tired of the Empire's nonsense, too. I mean, she was an _Invader_ and now she's out in the Scabs."

"That doesn't mean she'd be prepared to take off her PAK, turn against the Empire, and kill the Tallest," Zim said. "We have to be completely certain that she's ready before I can give you permission to retrieve her."

"Well, how am I supposed to get her on board if all the stuff about the PAKs and the Tallest are confidential?" Skoodge whined.

"I declare that it is now un…confidential."

"O-oh! Okay! Geez, where should I even start? I have another broadcast session scheduled with her in an hour."

"Start with whatever feels right, I guess. PAKs, maybe? That'll help prime her for the whole killing the Tallest thing."

"You think so?"

"It worked on Tak."

Skoodge got that knowing grin on his face that Zim hated.

"Don't start," Zim growled.

"Alright. I won't," Skoodge said, putting his hands up. "Anyway, thanks for giving me the okay. I'll talk to Tenn and soon she'll be here with us."

"I can barely contain my excitement," Zim said disinterestedly.

Skoodge kept smiling as he walked off, but before he got out of earshot, he yelled over his shoulder, "Tak's in the main hangar, just so you know!"

Zim growled, heat flaring in his cheeks. His hand went to the side of his head, fingers tracing the thick, dark scar Lattice had given him. With strong healing ointment, it could've almost completely disappeared by now. But he'd wanted it to heal naturally, to serve as a reminder to himself and others of what he was capable of surviving.

He threw himself back into the chair that had once belonged to Lard Nar, in front of the array of monitors in the captain's quarters. His main project since becoming captain was to sift through row after row of code from his PAK, a virtual alternative to the examinations he'd done on its physical parts. He was trying to identify as much of the Curse code as he could in order to fashion a weapon against the Control Brains, like Tak had suggested. If all went as planned, he would simply need to insert a disc or drive of some sort into the interface system that connected them to the Massive. Then, the Curse would complete its infection and the Brains would be utterly corrupted.

But now, thanks to Skoodge, he could barely concentrate on the boring letters and numbers flashing on the screens. Ever since the night Tak had saved him from Lattice, and the moment on the gurney when he felt the ethereal shift between them, he'd struggled to act normally around her, especially if they were alone. It felt like he was having an allergic reaction, with how his throat would constrict and his heart would pound as his body would break out in sweats. Meanwhile, she'd just be trying to correct the schematics he'd drawn up for his new VOOT, annoyed with him as usual. He'd never experienced such feelings before, and it made him wonder if PAKs also suppressed primal urges that the Control Brains had yet to completely wipe from the Irken psyche. It left Zim to wonder: if Skoodge and Tenn had feelings for one another, and _he_ had feelings…could Tak have them, too?

"Hey, nitwit," Tak said, suddenly behind him.

Zim nearly jumped out of his skin, shrieking in surprise.

"What, what is it?" he barked, collecting himself.

"They did it. The ship is finished," she said.

"It…it is?"

"Yes."

"The artificial gravity system has been tested?"

"Yep."

"All the buttons and knobs have been added to all the control panels?"

"Affirmative."

"The windows have all been polished?"

"Shiny as ever."

"Every bolt tightened, every snack packed, every bingle bongled?"

"I don't know what that last one means, but _yes!_ It's _all _done! Every last thing," she said.

Zim stared down at the tabletop, strewn with number sheets and schematics and ration bar wrappers. It was done. They had done it.

His eyes shot up to meet hers. "What about a name?"

Tak nearly gave the affirmative, but caught herself, antennae falling. "Oh. I guess there _is_ one last thing we have to do. Other than blast off and kill the Tallest, right?" she laughed. Tak had become steadily giddier the nearer the ship came to completion—Zim thought she could give a newborn smeet with a lollipop in its mouth competition.

"You mean go to Earth. We have to pick up the Dib-human first," he reminded her. "And then we'll have to make a pitstop in the Scabs."

"What? The _Scabs?"_ she asked, antennae pulling back.

"Skoodge wants to pick up Tenn. That's where she's stationed."

"But that's Irken territory."

"It'll be risky. But not much happens out that way. And if we do run into trouble, it'll be a good training opportunity."

"If you say so. I'd just hate to sustain significant damage in that brand new ship," she said wistfully.

"I know. But I promised we'd find a way to get her," he replied.

"I guess so. I'm just sick of waiting," she said. "Speaking of which, the rest of the crew is out in the hangar. Let's go!" She grabbed ahold of his arm and swept him away.

As they rushed through the corridors Zim couldn't help but think about how far they'd come; from their disgruntled tolerance of one another on Dirt to their amiable partnership now. He trusted her implicitly, and he knew that she trusted him, too. When they trained, they knew precisely how to lean into each other's strengths while covering their weaknesses. They moved with astounding synchronicity, as though they'd done it all their lives—as though they were the same being, the same brain, like a PAK and its host body. They ran the Resisty with an efficiency it had never seen before, keeping the crew in constant check like dogs on a herd of sheep. And yet, there was still a barrier that separated them from each other. Zim couldn't figure out what it was, but he was determined to find his way around it, or over it, or under it, or through it by means of explosives.

They found the head of the crowd and climbed onto a stray bit of scaffolding so they could look out over the crew, who marveled at their handiwork and chatted idly.

"Pipe down!" Tak yelled. "We have to do one last thing before the ship is complete: give her a name! Your captain will now give his suggestions."

Suddenly all eyes were on Zim. His antennae sprang up. "Oh! Uh, yes! A name. It's a very important thing to have, otherwise no one would know what to call you. And it's bad luck to fly a ship without a name. So, it's going to need one. Before we fly it."

"You don't have any ideas, do you?" Tak asked, even though she said it like a statement.

"No! No, that's not it at all. I just thought…" he looked out at the crowd again. "I just thought it should be an open forum! What names do _you_ all like?"

The crew members looked side to side at one another, shrugging and muttering. Then Spleenk rushed forward and said, "Let's call it the _Resisty Mach 2!"_

"The _Resisty Mach 2?" _Zim said, upper lip curling in disgust.

"Well, the old ship was the _Resisty_, so it seems right that this would be number two," Spleenk replied. The crowd hummed in assent.

"Wait, wait, wait. The old ship was just called the _Resisty?"_

"Yeah."

"But the organization is called the Resisty."

"Yeah."

"So, you just _named_ it after the resistance?"

"Yeah."

"That's so stupid!" Zim said, smacking his forehead.

"You're just mad cuz you can't think of anything better!" Veedo yelled, putting a hand on the dejected Spleenk's shoulder.

"Can too! My incredible brain meats are just busy working on other, more amazing things, so it takes them longer to complete menial tasks like this. But I'm ready now! We'll call it…we…will call it…" Zim trailed off, looking back over his shoulder at the ship. It was unusual to look at, because it comprised many styles—Irken, Vortian, and Meekrob, most prominently. The central hold was deep red and rounded, modeled after the _Massive_, and two long, curved wings protruded from the front, like battering rams. But despite the unconventional redesigns, the vessel's curves, lines, wings, hulls, engines, and cannons looked unified.

Zim suddenly knew what he wanted to name the ship, the thing that was the combined effort of the crew and the result of his and Tak's work as the new leaders of the resistance.

He looked out to the crowd. "Unity," he said.

"What?" someone yelled.

"The ship will be called the _Unity," _he repeated.

The crowd was silent, staring at him. Then they burst into boos and moans.

"You think _our_ idea was stupid? _That's_ stupid!" Spleenk yelled.

"No it's not!" Zim roared. "This ship represents everything we've worked together to build—it's a symbol of our _unification_, across the boundaries of space and species, against the Irken Empire! _Unity_ is a name that _means_ something! And it's actually thoughtful, I put _thought_ into that!"

"Well, we don't like it," Veedo said, crossing his arms.

"But you know what we _do_ like? _Resisty Mach 2, Resisty Mach 2,"_ Spleenk began to chant. Veedo joined in and soon the entire crowd was chanting the horrible name over and over and over. Zim tried to make them stop, but they were too loud. He yanked his antennae in fury and finally relented.

"ALRIGHT!" he bellowed; the crowd settled down. "Fine! If you ingrates want the ship to be called the _Resisty Mach 2, _so be it. And we'll be the laughingstock of the galaxy!"

The crew cheered in victory, fists flying into the air. Veedo gave Spleenk a congratulatory pat on the back as the spindly alien wiped a tear of triumph from his eye.

Zim shot a glare over at Tak. "Let's give the _Resisty Mach 2_ an inspection so I can find something to yell at them about."

She grinned and hopped off of the scaffolding after him. They walked up the main ramp into the loading dock, where the few one and two-man ships they had were already tucked in and awaiting takeoff. At first, Zim just fumed and muttered to himself, but the deeper into the ship they walked, the more his anger fell away. Every corridor shone, un-scuffed by boots and un-dinged by bumps and blasty-fire. The main deck offered a wide, panoramic view of the hangar, which would soon be replaced by space; in the center, a holo-map projector to display their course and the trajectory of enemy vessels. It smelled new. And it was all theirs.

"Let's go look at the captain's quarters!" Zim exclaimed. "I haven't seen it with all the paneling installed!"

Tak pulled her eyes away from the transmission panel and followed quickly after him. They took the lift pod all the way to the top floor and followed a long corridor to a room at the front of the ship. Zim placed his hand on the bio-scanner and doors whooshed open. It was a dome-shaped room with a U-shaped sitting area and a chair elevated above the other bench seats; at one end was an alcove for resting.

"Watch this," he said, punching a code into a panel on the wall. The ceiling became a hologram of the outside, giving them a 360-degree view of everything beyond.

"It's going to be beautiful when we're out in space," Tak said, shaking her head in wonder.

"Wait, wait, that's not even my favorite part," he said, running to a wall adjacent to the sleeping nook. Another keypad appeared as he approached and he punched in a few codes. "Dance Hall Days" filled the room from the discreet surround sound system he'd installed himself.

"I scanned and uploaded all of the Dib-human's music discs to the computer so I can listen to them whenever I want! I even implemented an algorithm that can play songs from any disc at random; I call it 'shuffle,'" he said proudly. He spun a few times on the heel of his boot and stepped from side to side in time with the beat.

"I'm glad you found something so important to spend your time on but…what are you doing?" she asked.

Zim stopped, an embarrassed flush creeping up his face. "Oh! It's, uh…it was dancing. But it's nothing, it's nothing."

She smirked at him. "Another bizarre human habit you picked up?"

"Another? What else have I done that's so strange?"

"Well, you certainly took on an accent. Sometimes I could barely understand your Irken when you first came to Dirt. And you write with odd symbols occasionally; human script, if I recall it correctly," she said, sauntering closer with each example. "And of course, we can't forget your fondness for their music."

He eyed her up and down, sticking his lip out in a pout. "Well, at least they're entertaining quirks."

"Oh?"

"Yes, dancing can be quite fun. Or at least the humans seemed to have fun doing it."

"Is that so?"

Rather than answering her, Zim did another spin, then a backwards shuffle, a few shoulder shimmies thrown in for flair.

"You look ridiculous," she said.

"But I'm having fun," he replied. "Don't you think we deserve some fun after all we've been through?"

A sad smile crossed her face and she glanced down at her boots, polished and perfect even after several months of wear. "I don't know how."

"To dance?"

"To have fun," she looked back up at him. "At least, not until someone shows me."

He swallowed, that allergic reaction feeling pinpricking at his skin. But, like he'd seen humans do, he raised a hand to her, palm up; an offering. She studied it dubiously for a moment, then accepted. He took her other hand and began by pulling her arms forward and back, one at a time, as uncertain about what he was doing as she was. Then he locked their fingers together and spun them. Her face was flushed, but as the dizziness took hold she started to laugh, and he laughed with her.

"I Want to Know What Love is" came on next. They stopped, still giggling.

"This is slower. How do you dance to it?" Tak asked.

"Uh," Zim said, voice cracking. "Kind of…like this."

He took her hands again and placed them on his shoulders; he put his own on her waist, to which she made a strangled sound.

"We don't have to," he said.

"Well, no, if that's the way it's done, fine, I just—it's strange," she said, staring at some point on the floor. "Is…is that it?"

"No, we have to move a little," he said. He led them in a small, slow circle, stepping from one foot to the next. They were both rigid, holding each other at the furthest possible distance while still touching.

"So…this is all we do? For the whole song?" she asked.

"Eh…sort of. That's how it worked at the Earth school dances I attended."

"Dances? What, did they have whole events just for dancing?"

"They did."

"Ridiculous. And you went?"

"To a few. I had to blend in, and multiple sources confirmed that only abnormal people don't attend dances. Then I discovered there were many humans who didn't go because they deemed the dances 'lame.' But not the crippled way; on Earth, the term means something more like 'superfluous.' The Dib-human never went to any for that reason."

She looked thoughtfully over his shoulder. "So, what is the purpose of a dance event, then?"

"It's a social gathering for young humans, mostly. Purely for amusement. And…well…"

"What?"

Now he looked away. "There were…elements of courtship as well. If two humans bonded well enough, they might attend the dance as a pair. Or pair up at the event."

"Pair up?" she asked. "As in, dance together?"

"Yes."

"So…we're paired up right now?"

Zim was so hot he thought he might pass out. "W-well, uh…sort of? S-sort of, yes, because we're dancing as a pair, b-but that doesn't have to mean anything, not in the Earth context, we're just doing the move, I-I'm just showing you the move—,"

"Shut up," she said. "You're getting off-tempo."

His jaw snapped shut. After another moment, he let out a gust of breath. "Right," he said.

The song was coming to a close. Just a little longer and they could separate and get back to the silly bouncy stuff. But his shuffle algorithm betrayed him and switched to "Can't Fight This Feeling."

"Oh, another slow one. I can change it, I'll just have the computer play something else—,"

Her claws pressed into his shoulders. "No, let it go. I'm getting the hang of this one."

"O-okay."

"Unless you don't—,"

"No! No, let's keep going," Zim said, his own hands tightening on her involuntarily. They went in a few circles, not as stiff as before.

"Okay, there has to be a variation to this," Tak said.

"There are a few," he replied. "But…they require us to be a bit closer."

"That's alright."

He stepped closer and took one of her hands, holding it next to them at shoulder height, like he'd seen in a movie once. Her other arm bent and rested against his own; his other hand remained on her waist. In their new position, he led them in a box step. Except he didn't fully understand how to do a box step, so they squashed each other's toes a lot. But soon enough they found a rhythm, just like they had in every other aspect of their lives, which orbited more and more closely with time, like a binary star system unceasingly tightened by gravity.

"So, this is all there is to it. To a dance. To pairing up," Tak said, meeting his eyes.

"Sometimes there's more," Zim said.

"Like what?"

Should he try it? The thing he'd wanted to do when he saw her wounds after the fight with Thork? The thing humans did at dances when the song reached its big crescendo, like REO Speedwagon was doing right now? _Stop worrying, it's very un-Zim. Stop worrying and just—_

He brought his face forward too fast, so his teeth banged against his lips, and his lips against her lips, and her teeth beyond that. He'd yanked her forward, so their hips and torsos were pressed together, just like their backs when they slept at night. Their legs were crisscrossed, his left, her right, his right, her left. Their other hands were locked together, a set of claws to dig into each set of knuckles.

Her teeth clamped down on his lower lip and, with a yelp, he released her and backed away. They stared wide-eyed at one another. Their binary system had grown too close, burning as it tried to become a single, brilliant, radioactive mass. The song changed, but he didn't hear what it was.

"What was that?" Tak asked.

"A thing humans do. A kiss," Zim said.

"Why?" she asked through gritted teeth; teeth with his blood on them, the blood of his mouth. "Why are you so _obsessed_ with doing what humans do?"

"I…I was just…trying to show you," he'd been so hot before, but now he was sharply, frightfully cold. "Look, I'm sorry, I should've asked, I—,"

"Shut up!" she snapped. "Just for five seconds, shut up." She turned away from him, hands on her head and running over her antennae.

He clenched and unclenched his fists five times. "Tak, I'm—,"

"For the love of Irk, stop."

"Come on, I'm trying to say I'm sorry! I should've known you wouldn't like it, but—,"

"No! That's not the problem," her hands hovered in front of her like she wanted to make a cage around herself but didn't because, more than that, she wanted to be strong.

He almost blurted out more half-baked apologies, but locked his jaws shut, waiting. That was the only way with her, sometimes; to wait until she'd made the decision for herself, whatever it turned out to be.

She wouldn't look at him, but she spoke. "When you landed on Dirt, I hated you. When you made me take off my PAK, I hated you. When you dragged me to Cyberflox and enlisted me in the Resisty and I got that horrible device shoved into my back, I hated you. There are so many parts of myself I've lost since you came: my desire to be an Invader, to please the Tallest, my perception of myself as defective. Even my PAK, half of myself, lost. But my hatred for you remained constant. It was the _one_ thread of myself that connected who I was to who I became. But…at some point…it just vanished. And I didn't even care. I didn't care that the last thing that made me _me_ just…went away. Now, here I am, sleeping next to you, acting like a complete fool—letting you put your mouth on my mouth! But the worst part is I don't hate it. I don't hate you. I-I don't know who I am anymore. And…and I don't know what to do…"

A retching gasp cut her off and she did something even more surprising; she cried. Exactly five big, pink-tinted tears: two for the right eye, three for the left. Her face convulsed angrily, like it was trying to hide the tears away in the folds of her skin. It didn't work and she roughly palmed them away.

"And now I'm crying, in front of _you_ of all people. Because this new version of Tak is pathetic on top of being insane," she said. Her arms finally crossed.

Zim had no idea what to do or say. Even Dib had never had such an outpouring in front of him. The song changed once more, to "The Lights Go Down." He stopped breathing; he hadn't heard it since he'd curled up in Tak's ship for what he thought would be his final sleep. Was there any part of him that was still connected to that old incarnation? The one who was a defective Food Service Drone convinced he was an Invader; the one who wanted nothing more than to be praised by the Tallest; the one who hated Tak and had just used her ship as a means to get away from the planet of his greatest failures?

He walked past Tak and stopped the music. Then he returned to her, but stayed just far enough away that even if he reached out, he couldn't touch her.

"I'm not sure who I am anymore, either," he said. "Most days I don't really feel like Zim at all. Zim doesn't win invasions, Zim doesn't share his victories, Zim doesn't…care about people. Or like spending time with them. Or dance, Zim definitely doesn't dance. Not when people are looking, anyway."

She smiled a little, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Doesn't it scare you?"

"Maybe. Sometimes. But I think the old Zim was a lot more scared. He just didn't want to admit it," he said. "And his PAK probably regulated how much fear he felt."

Now a bitter laugh came out. "Right. I thought I'd miss the weapons most, but maybe it's the higher functions that did more to protect us."

"No. To control us," he said. _"This_ is who we're supposed to be."

She sighed. "I don't think I like who I'm supposed to be very much."

"I like you," he said.

Tak stared at him blankly for a few moments, perhaps preparing to say something more, but then her expression turned sad again. She began to walk away.

"W-wait, where are you going?" Zim called after her.

"To polish my boots," she replied, not looking back. "Some little bug stepped all over them."

The door hissed shut. Zim didn't know if he'd broken past the final barrier between them or fortified it to an impenetrable state. All he knew was that his lower lip was throbbing, the room was still and quiet, and he was alone.

* * *

**Author Note:** YAYYYYY this is the other one I've been really excited to post! It's the reason for the story's name change lol. I hope you enjoyed the romance, conflict, 80s music, and terrible ship names.


	23. Chapter 22

Zim and Tak slept apart from one another that night. It was the first time in a long time that they weren't curled up in the ship together. Instead, Zim had thrown himself back into working on the Curse, trying to decipher all the broken bits of code to assemble them into something that might actually be useful. At some point, a blink had turned into a brief sleep. He straightened up in his chair, grimacing as he tried to rub the soreness out of his neck.

"Guess I'll have to finish you up on the way to Earth," he said to the screen. He put a gloved hand on the monitor. It was warm and so old that it produced a fine haze of static that would probably nip his fingers later when it discharged. And inside, where he couldn't touch, was all the data that had made him Zim—or the Zim it had wanted him to be. He thought about what Tak said, about how she didn't know who she was anymore, in part because she had lost her PAK. He thought about what Lard Nar had said, too. _Did_ he know who he was? Was he someone who wanted to go on a suicide mission to get revenge on the Tallest? Was that really what Tak wanted, too?

They were leaving today, most likely. Leaving the smog and seedy dealings of Cyberflox to set out on their mission. When they left the atmosphere, it would all become totally, irreversibly real. No turning back. Would they be okay with that? Would _he_ be okay?

Zim pushed out his chair and stood. It would be awhile before breakfast was served, so the hangar was still and silent. But he knew before he even reached the main hold where the _Resisty Mach 2_ rested that Tak would be there, unable to sleep just like him. She was staring up at the ship, dusty but brilliant as it awaited its maiden voyage.

"Hey," he said, stopping a few feet behind her.

She turned to him. "Hey."

"Um," his hand went to the side of his head, tracing the scar. "Can we talk?"

"I don't really want to."

"But you said we need to communicate. All the time. No exceptions."

"I know I did," she sighed. "Let's go to the roof."

Cyberflox never got particularly light, not even at the height of day, so it always had that sickly yellow glow from countless artificial sources. They stood in that light together, on the rooftop of the Resisty's hangar—_their_ hangar—and listened for a few moments as their dirty, temporary home grumbled to life around them.

"I assume this is about…what happened," Tak said, arms crossed.

Zim tongued at his bottom lip momentarily, still tender from her bite. "Partly, yes. But…mostly something else."

She raised her antennae expectantly.

He sighed, wishing more than anything that he had a couple of nebulas in him right now to help the words come out easier. "Are…are you sure—completely and utterly sure—that you want to go through with this mission?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Of course I do! Why would you even ask that question?"

"Because I've been thinking a lot about this whole situation. We have _one_ ship—and it's a fine ship with really big guns and people to shoot them, but it has to go against the Armada which has…I don't even know how many they have, but it's _a lot."_

"We also have a legion of single-fighter ships for auxiliary defense and frontal attack," she countered.

"The Curse still isn't completely decrypted, so we don't have our Control Brain killer."

"But we're close. We'll keep working at it on board and have our virus complete before we reach the Scabs."

"And say we actually pull this mission off and don't get blown into star chunks the second we pop up on the _Massive's_ scanners. Then what? The Empire will be in a state of upheaval without the Tallest and the Control Brains. So what do we do? Leave it to burn? Or dedicate the rest of our lives to picking up the pieces?"

"You don't even sound like yourself right now. Since when have you ever gotten worked up about the future?"

"Since…" Zim started to shout back his response, but stopped himself. Could he really bring himself to say it out loud?

"Since _what?"_ Tak demanded.

He summoned his bravery and looked at her directly. "I don't have much time left, Tak."

"What?"

"There was a file on the captain's computer containing the results of the experiments they ran on me," he said. "One of those results was a lifespan prediction. I…I have 30 years left, at best."

Now her eyes were wide, the blood draining out of her face to leave her sickly pale.

"I know what you're going to ask, and yes, you and Skoodge have files as well. I didn't look at them. If you want to know what's inside, you can see for yourself," he said.

She shook her head slowly, though he wasn't sure if it was to reject his offer or just out of horrified astonishment.

"But, do you get it now?" he asked. "I…I'm _scared,_ Tak. I can count the number of decades I have left on one hand. I just…I don't know if I want to spend them dealing with the consequences of my destruction. I've already ruined so much. Including…" he glanced at her, thinking of the sadness in her eyes after he told her he liked her, right before she walked away. He sighed. "Well, I guess there wasn't anything there to begin with."

Her brows pinched together, some of the color coming back to her face. "You don't want to do this," she said.

His eyes were on the ground. "I don't know."

"Why did you wait so long to tell me if you found this out when you killed the captain?"

"I thought revenge was still what I wanted. And the chance to make up for all that Curse nonsense. But…I don't know…"

"Quit saying you don't know. You _do_ know. So, tell me: what changed?"

He lifted his head to look at her again. "We did. Last night."

"What does _that_ have to do with any of this?"

"Everything, Tak!" he said, grabbing her shoulders. "Time after time on this nightmare of a mission, I've questioned whether I want to keep going, if it's all worth it, and the answer is always yes—but only if you and I are together. I don't even care about the mission anymore; it's not something I want to spend more of my limited time worrying about. But I'll do it if it means the rest of my life has _you_ in it."

"Zim…" she said his name quietly, uncertainly.

His grip slackened and his hands fell away. Realizing what he'd just admitted, he began tracing his scar to ground himself in something other than his rising nausea. "Go ahead and say it: I'm an idiot and that was officially the stupidest thing to ever come out of my mouth."

Then Tak did something that nearly sent his head up through the traffic and into the hazy atmosphere. She came close to him and took the hand that rubbed his scar in her own, pulling it down to where she'd laced their other hands together.

"The only stupid thing you said was that you're only doing this mission for me," she said. "You have so much more purpose than that. I've seen it: on Dirt, and in the old warehouse, and when you went to kill Lard Nar. Fear has just made you lose sight of that purpose. Like you said, it's unregulated since we're without our PAKs. But you don't need your PAK to stand up to fear. And neither do I."

Leaning forward, Tak pressed her forehead to Zim's, shutting her eyes in the ultimate display of trust that an Irken could give. She raised her antennae until they touched his own, which happened to be straight up in shock. Pushing their flexibility to the limit, she coiled them around his, the twisting sensation causing him to shut his own eyes as a completely new emotion swelled in his chest.

Then he felt it: the nearly forgotten phenomenon of having two minds at once. It wasn't the perfect synchronicity of his PAK and it wasn't telepathy—not exactly. But impressions of Tak's emotions fluttered amongst his own in his skull, their unspoken thoughts mingling in rainbow flashes behind his eyelids. Their fear of the future was a yellow strobe light; the courage to face it, hand in hand, together, was a deep red sun. They mourned all the loneliness and cruelty and injustice the universe had dealt them in sharp blue laser beams; they cherished each gentle rest they had, back to back, together, and the happiness they felt knowing there were many more to come was a guiding green beacon. _We have each other_, echoed in their shared void, and Zim had no idea whether it was her voice or his own.

Slowly, the reality of the hangar roof bled back into focus. Tak carefully unwound her antennae from his, let go of his hands, and pulled her head away.

Then she abruptly stopped because one antenna didn't quite come loose. Their eyes met, wide from the unexpected pain, and they laughed. They reached up to free themselves at the same time, his hand knocking against hers, and they laughed harder. Because he had done it before, he finished the job of getting them free, and they each rubbed at their antennae as they caught their breath, which, somehow, was still harmonized.

"What…_was_ that?" Zim asked, his tongue feeling numb.

"You don't remember? It's something very old that Irkens did long before PAKs—something the Control Brains haven't been able to squash out," Tak replied, a deep green hue coloring her cheeks.

"But what _is_ it?" he asked.

Tak looked thoughtfully to the side. "Let's call it a kiss."

He felt his skin bristling with something akin to goosebumps. "What brought that on? I mean, after last night, I thought—,"

"I know, I know," she said. "I'm just not used to being…vulnerable like that. But you were vulnerable with me just now, and you clearly needed something to snap you out of that funk. So…"

"So…does this mean that you…have feelings? For me?"

"What are you, thick? I conveyed the depths of my being to you through an ancient mating ritual and you _still _don't have a clue? Really?"

"MATING?" Zim hollered, nearly toppling over.

"Well, sort of. It's not like we're equipped to complete the ritual. And don't act so prudish when you engaged me in a mating dance earlier," she said, crossing her arms.

"It wasn't like _that!_ Not really!" he shouted. She laughed again and he just shook his head, staring off into the vaguely brightening sky that was Cyberflox's attempt at morning.

"Should we have breakfast on board? Before we blast off into the great beyond?" Zim asked.

She stood next to him, eyes on the same slice of sky between buildings. "I suppose we could have one last meal on the ground."

A pause.

"You really think we can pull it off?" he asked.

"Yes. Even if it doesn't go exactly to plan."

"And after…are we really going to be…"

"Together? I think that would be good…for GIR and MIMI's sake. They really seem to like each other."

"Yes, they do."

They climbed off the roof and back down into the hangar. Skoodge gave them a look over their breakfast that they tried to ignore. Then, with the crew at their stations and Zim and Tak at the helm of all operations, the _Resisty Mach 2_ rose off the ground, out of the hangar, and into its first brush of infinite space.

Zim didn't feel as strongly as he thought he would about leaving the planet where his life had changed so much. He supposed it was because he took all the things he needed with him for the long ride onward.

Well, just about.

* * *

**Author Note:** Unified at last! Now there's just one more thing he needs. ;)


	24. Chapter 23

The Earth was shrouded in clouds, a sphere of swirling blue and white. Given its position relative to the sun, it was wintertime. Around Christmas or New Years, perhaps. Wouldn't it be funny, he thought, if he descended upon Dib's backyard to find him standing right where he'd left him? Given relativity, it was possible. But there were new manmade satellites orbiting the blue planet, so he was certain that at least a few years had gone by.

"Heading down soon?" Tak asked, approaching as he gazed upon the planet suspended just beyond the main hold.

"Yes," he replied. "It's going to be terribly cold. No more PAK to help me regulate my temperature."

They were quiet, watching Earth's slow rotation.

"Are you sure he'll want to come with us?" she asked.

"Of course he will. The Dib-human would never pass up an opportunity to explore outer space."

"Then why are you so hesitant to go?"

He looked over at her, antennae springing up; it was always surprising how easily she could read him.

"I was a very different Zim when I left this planet. I don't know how exactly I should feel about coming back," he said.

"Then quit thinking about it and go. What will be, will be."

"I think you just want me to hurry up so we can go kill the Tallest."

She shrugged, a wry smile crossing her face. "Get moving. Your ship is already warmed up."

He shook his head and walked to the elevator. "Keep them under control while I'm gone."

"So, do what I always do even _while_ you're here? Check," she said.

He rolled his eyes. She always had to have the last word. The elevator doors opened.

"Zim," she said, just before he could step inside. He turned and found her barely a step away from him. She put a hand on the back of his head and brought his forehead to hers. "You'll be alright."

He shut his eyes, feeling the warmth of her mind against his own. "I know."

In the hangar, his new VOOT was primed for takeoff, just like she'd said. He and Tak had modeled it after her own ship—it was more powerful than his old one had ever been. It flew smoothly from the docking bay and through the final stretch of darkness that separated him from Earth.

The moon hung brilliantly in the sky, the thick clouds highlighted like a soft, slow-moving sea below. He dove past them and was greeted by the golden, twinkling lights of the city—his city—blanketed with a healthy layer of snow. Headlights ambled along the streets that stitched all the neighborhoods together, the houses glowing more brightly than usual from Christmas decorations. It all seemed so two-dimensional after living so long in the multilayered traffic of Cyberflox. He flew over the cul-de-sac where his base used to be and hardly recognized it; the crater had been filled in, repaved, and redeveloped with houses that puffed smoke from their chimneys, warming the humans that lived totally unaware of him inside.

He finally spotted it: Dib's house. The lights were still on, so whoever was inside was still awake; he'd have to be quiet. He hovered over the backyard and set the ship down slowly, right in front of the garage. It could've been the exact point he'd taken off from.

The cockpit hissed open and the bitingly cold Earth air rushed in. It was uncomfortable, but Zim sucked it in all the same: snow, pine needles, wet asphalt, a hint of burning wood. Long ago, he'd convinced himself that he hated all those smells, but now they unwound a tension inside him he hadn't known was there. Instead of feeling shame or resentment or sadness at returning to Earth, he felt like he'd finally come back home.

But he couldn't stay for long. He stepped out of the cockpit, boots sinking into the snow with a satisfying crunch that only Earth snow could make. He stepped in the shallow remains of footprints that led to the back door from the cars parked in the driveway.

Cars? There had only been Dib's car the last time he'd been here. Now there were three, and none of them were the blocky black thing that Dib had driven them across the continent in. Then his eyes roamed up the trees near the garage; he was certain they hadn't been so large when he left. Suddenly the new satellites orbiting the planet and his completely restructured neighborhood felt unsettling. Zim's antennae sank to his skull as he returned his attention to the back door, the golden square of its window now foreboding. He walked up slowly, crouching on the stoop, and looked inside.

No one was in the kitchen, but he could see many people moving just past the doorway to the living room. One of them looked vaguely like Gaz, although with shorter hair. She brought a glass of something to another woman, who smiled and pressed her lips to Gaz's forehead. The Professor's hulking form passed by, but Zim couldn't be certain if it was him—his hair was far too gray.

Then a tiny human (a girl?) on undeveloped legs tottered into the kitchen for something, perhaps the plate of sweets on the table. Not two seconds later, a man came after her and scooped her into his arms. The little human reached for his glasses, but he offered her a small cookie before she could tug them completely off. A woman, different from the other two, came in and spotted him in the act; she put her hands on her hips in displeasure. The man just laughed, and when the woman reached for the tiny human, he handed her off. She smiled, said a few words, and pursed her lips. He leaned down and kissed her, his hand resting on the small of her back as they returned to the living room together.

Half of the window was fogged over from Zim's breath and he could no longer see inside. He staggered backward, heel slipping off the edge of the stoop; he fell into the snow, hissing at the burn as a few stray chunks of ice hit his face. He crawled hurriedly back to the ship and grabbed onto the lip of the cockpit, breathing hard.

"Ship," he said, still on his knees in the snow. "What Earth year is it?"

"According to data pulled from an orbiting satellite, it is Earth year A.D. 2022," the ship replied.

"2022," Zim gasped. "Th-that can't be right. It was A.D. 2007 when I left!"

"Well, Master, Cyberflox _does_ orbit rather closely to a black hole. The laws of physics dictate that time would move more slowly there than on Earth."

"F-fifteen years," he stammered, though not from cold. "I…I've been gone for fifteen years."

"You didn't think to check before you came down here?"

"I don't need any sass from _you_ right now!" Zim barked. He got to his feet, brushing away the snow before it could seep any further into his uniform.

The man he'd seen inside…could that really be Dib? His once gangly form had filled out, and what was left of his scarring was hidden by a dark, neatly trimmed beard. And that tiny human…could it be his, perhaps with the woman he'd kissed? Had the Dib managed to create a family in spite of his weirdness and his big head and the injuries Zim had wrought on his body? But, if Dib had a family, and if it really had been fifteen years…would he still want to go to space?

Would he even remember Zim at all?

A bitterly cold wind buffeted his antennae and sent the winter-stiffened trees creaking. He shivered and hugged his arms across his torso. Making up his mind, he reached into the ship and opened a panel to pull out the old leather CD case that had served him so well. There were a few more scratches in the old, smooth leather than when Dib had first given it to him, and a few of the discs tended to skip, but it was all still in fine shape otherwise. He followed his first set of footprints back to the door and set the case down gently on the stoop. He ran a hand over it one last time and returned to the ship. It was too cold to stick around any longer.

Then, from behind him, the creak of half-frozen door hinges. Zim's antennae stood on end, old instincts telling him to hide before his cover was blown. But instead, very slowly, he turned around. Dib was there, setting down a bag of trash as he bent to pick up the CD case. The glare from the kitchen lights behind him made his glasses look like perfectly round golden eyes as he turned the case over and over in his hands.

At last, Dib lifted his head. And they saw each other—they looked straight into each other's eyes, a chasm of silence between them. The snowflakes stopped falling, the wind stopped blowing, and even the Earth itself seemed to pause its path around the sun.

Then Zim remembered how to breathe and everything came unstuck again. All the grand speeches of victory that he'd planned on regaling his old friend with had slipped away, forgotten. They didn't really align with the new Zim he'd become anyway. So, instead, he said the most simple, natural thing that came to mind.

"Hello, Dib-thing."

The End

* * *

**Author Note: There you have it! Another one done, just in time for the holidays. Thanks so much for sticking with these stories - it's been super fun writing them and a joy to share them. And yes, this is gonna be a trilogy! I have no idea when I'll start posting the final story, but it's in the works. Just make sure to follow me if you wanna keep reading! Thanks y'all, and TTFN!**


End file.
